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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.

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Comments 54101 to 54150:

  1. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "The bulb is just poorly sited - see my pretty pictures??!!" "The bulb will change itself"
  2. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Australian Climate Madness I just love that! Sounds as though the name was chosen in a moment of irrational exuberance, too hastily to realize the double entendre. My immediate association on seeing the words: "coal exports."
  3. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Sorry, but the ideas just keep coming: "Say 'Ad hominem attack' three times before you start."
  4. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    "Switching on my lightbulb* won't make any difference, and it will blow out my power bill." [*Sadly, there is evidence that illumination doesn't work for some - it's the King Arnulf Effect.]
  5. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    In case anyone missed it, Astrofos is trying to poe Lewendansky's survey subject.
  6. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Yet another: "Put on your Galileo T-shirt before you screw it in."
  7. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    Daneel @26 - Let's be fair to Watts. That graphic would indeed show a quick sea ice extent recovery if you would just flip it upside-down. I'm sure that's what he meant. After all, Watts seems to view the world upside-down and backwards.
  8. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    I have notice that Australian Climate Madness and Climate Depot are prominently featuring a misinterpretation of my words, suggesting that I have said that Lewandowsky has no moral recourse but to rewrite, retract or correct his paper. More accurately, I believe that Lewandowsky has no recourse but to rewrite, withdraw or correct if he agrees with my analysis. I doubt any AGW "skeptic" will want to argue that disagreeing with an analysis by Tom Curtis is itself an immoral act - and certainly I would not either. (How does it come about that so simple a premise needs explaining?) I have left the following comment at Australian Climate Madness, and emailed Marc Morano requesting a correction. I would appreciate it if anybody who comes across a similar misrepresentation directs people to this post.
    "Your claim that, “As Tom Curtis observed, Lewandowsky has no moral alternative but to withdraw his paper” is an over interpretation of my words. It is very obvious that Lewandowsky has the very moral option of simply disagreeing with my analysis. If he disagreed, then he would be acting immorally if he did rewrite, withdraw or retract. This is a distinction you should easily be able to make. If you cannot, you are committed to the belief that every climate change “skeptic” with whom I disagree and who does not rewrite, withdraw or retract is acting immorally – a view to which I certainly do not hold."
  9. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    geoffchambers @150, for the record, up until about December 2010 I was only an occasional reader of SkS, and do not recall the survey at all.
  10. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    John Hartz: Increase the wattage. It will make plants grow faster and bigger. Corollary to "Global warming will expand the surface of the planet, a good thing!"
  11. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Stephan has a new post up providing all the pertinent details enquiring minds would want to know.
  12. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    geoffchambers@150 Thank you for the clarification.
  13. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Perhaps we should start a pool on when the Wattsonians will rise up in self-righteous indignation over Ari's toon and this comment thread.
  14. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    You speaketh volumes beyond words alone...
  15. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Most skeptics agree in principle on the need for a new light bulb, but believe that the modeled light output of most light bulbs is exaggerated by a factor of two.
  16. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    I don't need to change a lightbulb (often). One of my "early model" CFL bulbs gave up recently after 24 years of use, the other one (purchased at the same time) is still working ...
  17. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Another balloon: "Just follow Anthony's instructions!"
  18. Antarctica is gaining ice
    OK. Watts is claiming that a recent report by NASA shows that satellite measurements find that the Antarctic as a whole is gaining land ice mass rather than losing it as previously thought. He also has a side-swipe at skeptical science suggesting you update this post and he provides a link to this page.
  19. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Some more balloons to consider: "No can do. Changing a light bulb is part of the UN secret agenda to create a world government." "Light a candle! If candles were good enough for the Founding Fathers, they're good enough for us." "Burn some clean coal instead!" "Increae the wattage. It will make plants grow faster and bigger."
  20. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Thank you all.
  21. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    A couple of additional analyses of lighting alternatives: Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs – A Tale From Dust to Dust and LED life-cycle assessment HT to Hot Topic for pointers to those.
  22. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Laugh it up, fuzzballs....>;-D
  23. AGU Fall Meeting sessions on social media, misinformation and uncertainty
    Bob Loblaw #149 No, I did not mean to imply that anyone implied that I would not get a response. My apologies if I gave that impression. I was surprised that Cook offered to answer all my questions in a private email. I wasn’t after anything secret, but simply wanted to know if the post had gone up and if there had been any comments. The private email and the offer to tell all naturally whetted my appetite. I was sort of hoping he’d say: “Look, I’d rather this didn’t get about, but Tom Curtis tore the survey apart in the comments, so we binned them”, but no. Nada. Just the legendary Australian taciturnity when dealing with strangers. Pity.
  24. Vanishing Arctic Sea Ice: Going Up the Down Escalator
    HAHAHAHA!! I went to one of the linked posts by Watts. It's from 2008 and claims "that the recovery is at a significantly faster rate than in recent years." Clumsy old Watts hotlinked the extent graph from JAXA instead of hosting it himself. The thing is, that image is updated every day, so his post from 2008 now proudly shows a picture from 2012. "Look at the red line!"
  25. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    @ Dale: Luckily SkS (via Neven) answered your question here concerning the effects of an ice free Arctic.
  26. Antarctica is gaining ice
    Interested in your response to this post on WUWT. Thanks. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/10/icesat-data-shows-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/#more-70757
    Moderator Response: [DB] It is customary when linking to an outside document to first provide your understanding of it. Please proceed to do so.
  27. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Bob Loblaw - And we cannot make any predictions until the models of the 'speed of dark' are sufficiently robust, which won't be for decades...
  28. Philippe Chantreau at 04:23 AM on 11 September 2012
    2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Bob, that makes perfect sense. An entirely self consistent argument. It is in fact very close to the stuff we can find on the thermodynamics thread. Sigh...
  29. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Re: cartoon. Thermodynamics, schmermodynamics. You've got the physics entirely wrong. They're not even "light" bulbs, they're dark bulbs. They don't give off light, they suck out dark. Haven't you ever heard of blackbody radiation? The natural state of the world is to be filled with dark. A dark bulb lets us see by removing the dark, so it doesn't block the view any more. Proof? What does a bulb look like when it stops working? It's black - because it's full of dark. There's no more room for it to suck more dark.
  30. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Two more balloons: "Do you really want to spend trillions of dollars on a lightbulb?" and "There is only one true light, but you'll have to wait for his Second Coming to see it."
  31. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Unless you are a scholar and a well known scientist, no one may seriously listen to what you say, write or research. I am not a scientist but an electronic engineer with long years of interest in geology and history. This perhaps prepared me to look into multi-disciplinary branches of science, geology, history and planetary system simultaneously and address the cause behind 1) more than 10% drop in the magnetic field, 2) doubling of the number of quakes above 6 Richter in the past 5 years, 3) thermosphere increased influence on the temperature belts, 4) the planetary warming on Earth and on Mars, 5) the slowdown of the spinning speed of Venus and Saturn. Upon pulling all lines into cause and effect chain I was able to estimate the like of “Earth Changes” including the melting of the Arctic ice cap, the slowdown of Earth spin speed, the complete “Climate Exchange”; where some regions will get warmer while others will turn colder to name a few. The history records that are kept in ancient text, petroglyph and the history citation within the holy books helped to establish a timeline for the cycle of Earth Changes of 3562 years. (-Snip-) I bet that you must have guessed it already that the answer to the complete ice cap melting is 2017! I wish scholars and scientists such as Ian Allison, Nathan Bindoff, Robert Bindschadler, Peter Cox, Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudré, Matthew England, Jane Francis, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and many others who authored the 2009 Copenhagen Diagnosis report to come to read what I summarized on the above mentioned website but more important is to debate and raise all questions and I am glad to respond as much. I hope many of them do visit skeptical science, as I failed miserably to reach scientists through the normal email channel ! I believe in what Einstein had once said, that imagination is more important than knowledge. I add that humility brings us wings to help to rise.
    Moderator Response: [DB] Link-snipped. Please return to your earlier comment and answer the questions put to you there.
  32. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    Dale@57 If you compare the two scenarios of say a square mile with ice and a square mile without. The scenario with ice gets the energy away from the planet more efficiently than if the sea is warmed and has to radiate IR into the atmosphere. So basically, even if energy is emitted from the oceans, it is less efficient than reflecting it, which means warner conditions than if you had ice.
  33. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Another missing balloon in the toon: "Are you crazy? We will not replace incandescent bulbs with CFLs or LEDs!"
  34. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Heh. "If God had wanted us to live in the Light, than He would have made some well-lit Garden for us, um, ah, somewhere..."
  35. New research from last week 36/2012
    Re "socioeconomic carbon sinks," I wonder if we could bribe our way out of this problem by promising to continue paying hydrocarbon companies for their product, converting it to polyethylene* and then reburying instead of burning it? I'm fairly sure we'd see a large segment of climate change denial wither away if such an agreement were made. A pragmatic arrangement, sort of like "Danegeld." Various thermodynamic problems with that, I suppose, unless we used solar steam generators for the PE production process. Also, would it be ethical to bribe our way out of planetary destruction? *Nature's Plastic!
  36. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Awesome cartoon. Except he forgot "Light bulbs violate the second law of thermodynamics."
  37. New research from last week 36/2012
    The link to the text of Polvani and Solomon isn't working for me. The following link does: http://www.columbia.edu/~lmp/paps/polvani+solomon-JGR-2012.pdf
  38. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    OK. I will prime the pump. Winston Churchill For context, see the What say you? section of the OP. Your feedback is welcomed and desired.
  39. New research from last week 36/2012
    Does that wine data cover English exports during the Medieval Warm Period? :))
  40. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @51 timothyh - Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Bad choice of words. What I meant to say was we should be trying to sway those who could be swayed and not waste too much time trying to convince those who don't listen to evidence (irredeemable fake skeptics). If the rebuttal adds to the case, great, otherwise, the practice of linking to established arguments (as use widely here) provides the way for those seeking truth to find it. In reflection, all I meant was DNFTT.
  41. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    jasonB@106: "One of the great ironies is how the same people decrying "appeals to authority" when it comes to the IPCC and climate scientists will fawn all over someone they perceive to be an authority who agrees with them or will artificially inflate their own authority to suit." I recently finished reading the book and associated supplements available for free download from the following web site: The Authoritarians. It is written by a social psychology prof, about his years of research into something he calls "authoritarian followers" (and also the "leaders" that take advantage of them). It makes a very interesting case into the psychology of bowing to authority, and one of the issues is the selectivity of the acceptance of authority. Compartmentalized thinking, hypocritical application of "principles", having an "in group" vs. an "out group" mentality, etc., are also part of the picture. The web page I've linked to gives a brief description. The book itself is quite long. Take a look - it's fascinating in a scary kind of way...
  42. New research from last week 36/2012
    Great papers Ari! Willie Soon needs to read Pasini et al. (2012) ;) NIce to see that Trenberth and Fasullo put an end to the speculation about the Russian heat wave and Pakistan floods. Weather on steroids. And to compliment/corroborate Hansen et al's recent work, researchers find that exceptionally warm temperatures over Europe are increasing in frequency.
  43. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    YubeDude, And I don't mean to recast your comment as being applicable only to those extreme cases, such as weathermen-turned-skeptical-climate-science-expert-journalists. People need to learn to read every comment and to recognize that odds are it is being posted by some bored, lonely shmuck (much like myself) who has too much time on his hands and too inflated a view of his own value and the importance of his opinion. If it doesn't contain an insight that makes you think, or a fact that leads you to do some researching and fact-checking yourself, then it's little more than noise in the ether.
  44. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    YubeDude, Good point, except that society and social training just need to catch up. The world needs to (slowly) develop Internet street smarts (it is, with new concepts like "flaming" and "trolls", but it still needs more time). When I was a kid, my mother told me "don't believe everything you read." Not that much has changed, except that today there's a whole lot more not to believe than their used to be. People need to get used the fact that there are self-described Galileos out there. People need to learn to recognize and absorb them. More than that, people need to learn how to avoid feeding their egos. As a case in point, there is one such person who posts regularly at WUWT with his own outlandish theories of climate change. Like many before him, he cries out for attention. He begs to be noticed, and for him and his theories to be recognizes as the "genius" that they are. The travesty there is that moderation at WUWT is limited to deleting comments by people that don't agree with their position. People have no idea how many comments are deleted at WUWT (which is very funny, considering all of the moderation complaints that occur here, where this is a well thought out and explicit comments policy, one which strives to do exactly what we are discussing). But at WUWT, these self-described Galileans are given free reign to promote their nonsense. At WUWT it's "let the buyer beware" or, more accurately, "don't believe everything you read."
  45. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #36
    Great cartoon.
  46. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    Andrew Keen's excellent read, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, details many of the points being made here and in particular his comments have a very real application to internet postings on technical forums The internet allows the anonymous an ability to pretend and bloviate far beyond the braggadocio of mere bar talk; at least in the bar you have to physically cover the checks your ego tries to cash. On the internet, no one knows the "real" truth nor can they prove any personal claims proffered, it is a wild-west of fallacious credentials, Wiki-intellectuals, trolling tautologist, lying liars, and one kid in his mom's basement who only wanted to Rick-Roll you, that is until he took an arrow to the knee. The book clearly outlines how the cachet of credentials has been turned on its head by the standard-less standards of the internet. If you doubt this, buy my self publish book, visit my website, listen to my podcast or read my blog, I also edit for Wikipedia; after all, along with my MD, there is a law degree and multiple PhD's. And did I mention that I can out-drive any Formula One driver and pull in deeper than any ASP pro, I just choose not to; humble and handsome. The parts of the internet that work wonders for artist and musicians by allowing their creations access to a structured market place which they normally would not have has unfortunately impeded reasoned and intellectual discourse with a flood of unqualified noise and finger painted beliefs. As long as any opinion can carve out a position of equality with educated understanding we can expect this noise of the unwashed masses to drown out the reality of peer reviewed insights. Thanks to the internet we get talking points in a thread that quote a blog, which links to a cable news video where a fellow from a think tank, who used to be a speech writer, is telling us how it is all natural forcings without detailing what these forces are or the mechanics involved. And these are the days in which we live…
  47. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    @JasonB thanks for the graphs (#100): could you post sources? On journalists (#106), scientists are often accused of being poor communicators but journalists are meant to be professional BS detectors. I commented on this at length at my own blog. I'm now at a university in South Africa with a big journalism school so I can work on the problem at source. The problem is not just laziness about making sense of science. Superficially, fake balance accepting the logic that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge implies that journalists need to learn more science. But really, it's simpler than that. The mode of argument and the chief sponsors are exactly the same as for a range of other faux debates from tobacco to ozone hole. Failing to spot this is a major fail.
  48. Do we know when the Arctic will be sea ice-free?
    31, Dale,
    What climate impact will a summer ice-free Arctic bring to the World?
    You've gotten several answers to this, and SkS really should do a post focused on it, but (from me): First, recognize that this problem does not extend only to the sea ice. The surrounding land is also losing snow cover earlier and gaining it later. So, first and foremost, the albedo of that part of the planet -- which is in 24/7 sunlight for much of the year -- is changing. That means it is absorbing more sunlight and getting hotter. That's a positive feedback that makes it (and Earth) even warmer. Second, both the permafrost (on land) and sea (in the seabed) contain vast stores of methane, a powerful GHG that stays in the atmosphere as CH4 before "degrading" itself to CO2 (and then staying in the atmosphere in that form). That's a second positive feedback. Third, the dynamics of heat and water vapor transfer are completely changing. Once, wind and waves had no effect because the Arctic Ocean was for the most part a sheet of thick ice year round. Now low pressure areas can create cyclones that can whip the water around. That water can evaporate to form clouds. The system is changing. It is hard to predict what this will mean. It's complex. More clouds in winter that hold in the warmth? More clouds in spring or summer that help keep the albedo high? Is it even harder to form ice, because the melted ice gets mixed more thoroughly by the now active wind and waves? Do ocean currents change? Scientists have already figured out that the course of outflow of Siberian rivers has changed, dumping more freshwater into the Beaufort Sea where it used to go elsewhere. And how will these changes in weather patterns affect more civilized areas? There are strong theories that blocking patterns will become more common. This will mean that heat waves and cold snaps and droughts and the like, when they do hit, will last longer and perhaps be more severe. One of the problems with a drought, for example, is that normally, the ground cools through evaporation. But in a serious drought, all of the water has evaporated. This becomes a powerful positive feedback -- with no water to evaporate and cool the ground, the ground gets hotter, making it harder to accumulate moisture with which to cool the surface. So if blocking patterns make heat waves last longer, the chance of drought grows markedly. And who knows how ocean currents may change as a result of all of this? The earth hasn't seen a truly ice free Arctic in a very, very long time. So you can see there are very, very serious implications to the Arctic melt that we're seeing now (and what we're seeing now isn't by any means the worst -- this may be the "oh, sh*t" moment when we realize we're on course to go over a cliff, but that will be nothing compared to when we are actually on the precipice, or actually plummeting down). Bottom line: 1) Positive feedbacks that make temperatures worse, in the Arctic and globally 2) Side effects on weather patterns that have unpredictable consequences for every day life. Someone is going to go hungry, someone is going to have to move, and some things are going to have to change. I predict that within 50 years the USA may well have at least 1 if not 3 "ghost cities" -- major population centers that must be abandoned due to a combination of intractable water shortages, excessive weather dangers and difficulties generating enough food. Exactly where and when is the question.
  49. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    chuck101, I have always assumed that the false claims of expertise were a tool to sway others, who don't know any better, that they are just as qualified as the other scientists to hold an opinion and they disagree with those other scientists and thereby create an illusion of "debate", muddying the waters and leading onlookers to think the "science is not settled". The Oregon petition is another example of this. (One of the great ironies is how the same people decrying "appeals to authority" when it comes to the IPCC and climate scientists will fawn all over someone they perceive to be an authority who agrees with them or will artificially inflate their own authority to suit.) What I always find amazing is how transparently bad their attempts are. I mean, really basic mistakes that I would wish were obvious to anyone who completed high school. They become amusing when they attempt to dress them up with what they apparently believe is technical-sounding language that actually renders it gibberish, but the fact that so many seem to get sucked in by it is a sad indictment of education standards. The ones that really annoy me are journalists. Their role in a democracy is pivotal and as a consequence they have a duty to their readers to become informed. If they can't get their head around the science, hire someone who can — the basics are really not that complicated, and the errors made by the misinformers are so obvious there's no excuse for not picking them up on it.
  50. A vivid demonstration of knee-jerk science rejection
    I just have a further comment on Fake Expertise. This applies equally to real scientists like Carter and Plimer who claim expertise in a field unrelated to their own. Carter, for example, has 50 or so peer reviewed papers to his credit, in Geology (when he obviously didn't have an issue with the peer review process). That however doesn't qualify him to comment on climate science authoritatively. In fact, when he was co-author of a climate related paper in 2009; it failed the review process miserably: http://www.skepticalscience.com/denialgate-highlighting-bob-carters-selective-science.html It really does seem this is a defining characteristic of climate change deniers

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