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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 55151 to 55200:

  1. Patrick Michaels' 1992 claims versus the 2012 reality
    Harry Potter is a fairy tale, I don't think that claiming his "existence" is a good example.
  2. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Uncle Pete: Homo industrialis. I like to think of us as Homo bolidus, a species imitating a extremely large impacting body moving along a planet-wrecking trajectory. We're supposed to be smarter than a bag of rocks but so far our collective intelligence seems confined to areas mostly removed from competently planning our future. Hence we're anticipating and superseding the arrival of the next giant bolide with our own act.
  3. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I agree with Bernhard J @7 . Homo industrialis collectively deserve a Darwin Award. And I must thank Dana for continuously strapping on the armor of logic and rationality and getting into the breach once more. Am I wrong in thinking that climate scientists in general are rather blase about AGW (Hansen being the exception)?
  4. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Lindzen "CO2 levels are below the optimum levels for most plants......" Funny how there seemed to be enough CO2 during the entire Holocene, at lower atmospheric concentration than now. And long before the Holocene
  5. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Well Lindzen thinks uncertainty applies to everyone but him. He always plays up the aerosol forcing uncertainty, for example, and yet in his own calculations treats it as though the forcing is zero with zero uncertainty. We can't know how the climate is going to change in the future, but we know for sure it's not going to change very much! Frustrating indeed.
  6. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    re: 15, on Steve Schneider People may recall that Steve spent a lot of effort trying to include uncertainty in IPCC and explain it as well as possible to differing audiences, including random groups of people on Stanford lawns for open talks. We were talking one time and he said that Lindzen was so frustrating, not so much because his views were so far off from the data, but more because he just wouldn't admit to any uncertainty about them, and hadn't budged for decades.
  7. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
    And as such it superbly highlights the cognitive bias and deep-seated denial of deniers.
  8. 2012 SkS Weekly Digest #33
    We do have cactus in Wisconsin. Other than that the cartoon is just plain silly.
  9. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Sphaerica At the bottom of the page I linked to above is the data for individual stations. LA is one of the CA ones. For those who don't want to download and look, the trend is decreasing. I would have thought considering the temperature increase over the last few decades that we'd already be seeing thermal inversion impacts. Yet observations around the world do not show this occurring. Temps have increased between 0.6-0.8C (depending which graph you look at) since 1970. How much does it need to rise before any of the predictions start occurring? Like you say, it's to do with reducing pollants that has caused the reduction. It's nothing to do with GW. I'm glad we agree on that. If you've only got the building blocks to create ten ozone molecules, it doesn't matter how much higher the temp is, or how much more sun hits the air, you're only going to get ten ozone molecules. BTW, here's another link showing how the number of "bad ozone days" is reducing in LA. (http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amartinez/californias_lungs_need_a_passi.html)
  10. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    For anyone wishing to research this further (there is a lot of health information available on ozone), search specifically for "ground-level ozone".
  11. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Peter Wirfs: "These harmful blooms have been shutting down our fisheries from time to time, which directly impacts peoples livelihoods. Apparently they don't have proof of causation, only theories. But climate change is one of the leading theories." They're nothing new. The question here is whether or not climate change is responsible for what appears to be an increase in the frequency of these toxic algae blooms. It's similar to our state of knowledge regarding extreme weather events. The article you cite discusses other anthropogenic influences that might be responsible, and my guess is that the true answer is likely to be a mix (anthropogenic increases in nutrients due to ag runoff is real, transportation of phytoplankton via ship ballast is real, climate change is real ...), BTW if you're Allen's brother he and I knew each other as teen computer geeks ...
  12. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Broomy, not to mention that the paleoclimatic records would suggest that more CO2 goes into the atmosphere is the actual feedback when the temperature warms. Oceans can hold less; more released from tundra, asian swamps etc.
  13. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Dale, Following your links and looking at the graphs... they are 100% inapplicable. We are not saying that net ozone production will increase. Ozone levels are a rate-of-reaction thing between the competing pathways to create and destroy ozone. It's constantly going on, and usually in fair balance. Your average for an entire state for an entire month is going to be meaningless, as is (for this purpose) any trend. The trends you see probably have more to do with increasing air quality (i.e. removing pollutants that contribute to/catalyze ozone production) than anything else. For global warming, I believe we are talking about the sort of scenario I pointed out in California, for example, a case where an unusual heat wave hits with clear skies and a local inversion -- this causes ozone levels to rise to dangerous levels (for people) for a few days in a very local area (say Los Angeles, for example). I think you can see how this will not show up in the statistics you demonstrated. What you'd really want is a tally, by city, for number of days of ozone above a certain threshold, to see if that's increasing over time. Even then, it wouldn't apply to all cities. Ozone may never be a problem in Minneapolis. That doesn't mean it won't be a problem anywhere, though.
  14. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Regarding Oceanic trends, I've been very interested in this ongoing story off our Pacific coast line. I live within an hours drive of some of the effected areas of our coast; http://www.oceanandair.coas.oregonstate.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=content.display&pageID=174 These harmful blooms have been shutting down our fisheries from time to time, which directly impacts peoples livelihoods. Apparently they don't have proof of causation, only theories. But climate change is one of the leading theories.
  15. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I found Richard Kerr's "Greenhouse Skeptic Out in Cold" article published in Science 246.4934 (1989) useful to understand Lindzen: Then, as now, some say: "no other US skeptic has such scientific stature". Kerr got Lindzen to admit how unscientific his critique is: "what Lindzen has now is not so much a complete model as an idea about how control of atmospheric temperature works. Indeed, he describes it himself as an idea of a theological or philosophical nature" Kerr quoted Schnieder in 1989 on Lindzen's ideas: "I know of no observational evidence supporting it". His latest 2012 paper was rejected by PNAS editors as you discussed in your analysis because it was low quality and its conclusions were not justified. Nothing has changed. In his book "Storms of My Grandchildren" Hansen shares a story about when he shared a cab with Lindzen: "I considered asking Lindzen if he still believed there was no connection between smoking and lung cancer. He had been a witness for tobacco companies decades earlier, questioning the reliability of statistical connections between smoking and health problems". Hansen says didn't ask that question during that cab ride, but he says he did ask Lindzen later, at a conference both were attending: "He began rattling off all the problems with the data relating smoking to health problems, which was closely analogous with his views of climate data"
  16. North Carolina Lawmakers Turning a Blind Eye to Sea Level Reality?
    A big part of what's going on in North Carolina is the ongoing battle between locals and the US federal government over who pays when the inevitable losses due to rising sea levels occur. It isn't so much that lawmakers think they can control the sea. New development in areas near the sea that everyone knows will be wiped out one day by sea level rise is encouraged by quirks in existing federal law. If you can get away with building it, you can benefit. There's the Stafford Act. When the predictable new peak storm surge wipes you out, a disaster declaration by the President is all it takes to turn your area into a massive redevelopment project. You can get the benefits of the economic activity and the enjoyment of the coastal property, and when the storm surge comes, someone else will pay. The Act allows the US federal government to pay for rebuilding no matter what, supposedly to put things back the way they were, even though in the face of an accelerating rising sea level common sense would dictate taking that rising sea level into account. "Victims" can be owners of newly constructed rental coastal property wiped out by a storm surge caused by rising sea level everyone knows is coming, and putting things back the way they were can include rebuilding the home and even the beach in front of it, by trucking in sand. And there is the federal Flood Insurance program. It was supposed to be an attempt to discourage people from developing in high risk flood prone areas, but in practice in high risk areas exposed to rising sea level it encourages further development that would otherwise not occur because mortgage money was unavailable. (No federally regulated financial institution can write a mortgage unless flood insurance exists). NFIP flood insurance is the only flood insurance that is available in most flood prone areas in the US. Private insurance views flood insurance as basically impossible to write. Hence the attempted action by the North Carolina lawmakers that looked to outsiders as if they were attempting to legislate how fast the sea will rise. The state has a big say in determining what properties can be insured, because although the national authority FEMA retains the final say, it is the state and locals who draw up the flood insurance maps. This N.C. sea level law was directed at people who draw up the flood insurance rate maps. They were being directed to falsify what the real risk was, as seen by a North Carolina panel, because North Carolina doesn't think it will be required to pay when the flood comes. Once the map has been falsified, development can proceed. If the flood insurance rate map says there is "x" risk, that's what the risk is. FEMA will sell you a flood insurance policy and the bank will grant you a mortgage. At that point it does not matter what scientists have discovered. Its an old issue that will become more important as the years go by. Eg: from the 1985 Pilkey et.al. A National Strategy for Beach Preservation "Sea level is rising and the American shoreline is retreating. We face economic and environmental realities that leave us two choices: (1) plan a strategic retreat now, or (2) undertake a vastly expensive program of armoring the coastline and, as required, retreating through a series of unpredictable disasters." If you add global warming driving accelerated sea level rise to what Pilkey et.al. saw in 1985, you get what FEMA Director Craig Fugate said earlier this year in a speech: "We cannot afford to continue to respond to disasters and deal with the consequences under the current model.... Risk that is not mitigated, that is not considered in return on investment calculations, will often set up false economies. We will reach a point where we can no longer subsidize this."
  17. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Getting back to Lindzen and Crew, if a scientist trades on reputation to mislead the public and persists in doing so in places where critical public policy decisions are being made, with an eye to mutating public policy to fit a fictitious worldview, is the public owed some explanation and guidance by the malefactor's peers? Accepting that members of the lay public are ill-equipped to discriminate between one collection of letter salad and another and that it's particularly difficult to pick an expert when paper qualifications are identical, is there a way for professional societies and the like to provide some guidance? Leading up to this little screed I wrote for Planet3. If a professional society offers specific guidance to members concerning ethical behavior and then acts on that guidance by casting judgment on particular individuals, does it have an obligation to also treat such cases as Lindzen's?
  18. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 04:56 AM on 22 August 2012
    Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Apologies I posted that link without reading it properly the paper doesn't conclude that N is a limiting factor in plankton growth. "A similarly rigorous demonstration of N limitation has not been achieved for marine waters. Therefore, we conclude that the extent and severity of N limitation in the marine environment remain an open question." However 2 papers relating to iron deficiencies in Antarctic and Pacific subarctic.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] An additional, related paper is here:

    Global phytoplankton decline over the past century (PDF here; author letter response here).

  19. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 04:40 AM on 22 August 2012
    Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Broomy, There are nutients deficiencies in the oceans that limit the growth of plankton.
  20. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Broomy, see Climate change and marine plankton for a thumbnail intro and leads to tons of good literature.
  21. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    re: #9 The idea that there are built-in climate regulators is an attractive one, but exactly when are they supposed to kick-in? CO2 has been increasing steadily (and I believe exponentially), but neither Lindzen's Iris Effect of cloud formation nor a carbon-absorbing plankton bloom have ever materialized. These effects haven't developed in the past -- witness the advance and retreat of glaciers. Why they should pick now (or the near future) to work their magic would need to be explained.
  22. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I've looked through the site and don't find anything that addresses my question. I accept that the earth is heating up, but has anyone studied the impact of this heating on a feedback loop in which the earth stores more CO2 than prior to warming? For example, if the oceans heat up it seems that it would provide an environment more conducive to plankton growth. I read once many years ago that the CO2 stored in plankton dwarfs that stored in land-based plants. Is it possible that global warming will stimulate plankton growth so that the oceans store considerably more CO2 than it did prior to the warming? Or, does warming inhibit plankton growth and actually reduce the storage capacity of the oceans, and thereby reinforce the earth's warming?
  23. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Lindzen trades on his history and associations. He's been throwing gravel in the mental gears of the population for a couple of decades now, never changing his story even as research increasingly proves him wrong. When a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and MIT Alfred P. Sloan Professor tells you that temperature records in the US show no sign of concern, why wouldn't you believe him? There comes a point where shame is the only effective means of dealing with a miscreant. In this case, appropriate shaming can only come from a unique group, Lindzen's own peers in the scientific community. Unfortunately that community is too squeamish about social propriety and (let's face it) scared of Lindzen's silverback status to deliver the message the public needs to hear.
  24. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I swear, it's as if Nature and History were washing their hands of us.
    As I've just noted on a ThinkProgress thread (still in moderation as I type):
    With such species-wide, recalcitrant stupidity evolution may very well decide to give humanity a collective Darwin Award. And we can't say that we didn't know that we were nominated.
  25. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    I made my (grim) joke, but I wanted to add that the idea that since CO2 is plant food that it's therefore always beneficial is ludicrous. After all, we can't do without water, but we drown in an excess. And it doesn't need to be a huge excess, either.
  26. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    re: 1 Sprengel's Law Ominously, it's also known as Liebig's Law. I swear, it's as if Nature and History were washing their hands of us.
  27. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Bernard @1 - I hadn't heard specifically of Sprengel's Law, thanks. michael @2 - thanks. Composer @3 - valid point, the specific impacts are a question of science, and whether those impacts are 'good' or 'bad' is a somewhat subjective question. I think most people would agree that increasing droughts are a 'bad' consequence though!
  28. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Actually, I disagree with Lindzen et al's assertion that:
    Whether increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is bad or good is a question of science.
    Science can tell us the impacts of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. We decide whether these are good or bad based on what we value. Since the impacts include ocean acidification, sea level rise, and the decline of food production, all of which imply degradation of human well-being or even destruction of human life, I would say they are bad - indeed, very much so.
  29. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Dale@20, The claim that AGW will increase formation of O3 is supported by simple chemistry as explained by Spherica@19. It's so simple that you don't need to look for past trends to confirm that. However while you're looking at past treands you must remember, that O3 formation in troposphere depends largely not only on temperature, but also on the NOX & VOC emissions from vehicles, diesels & power plants. Your methods of research suggests that you do not take that second dependency into consideration. The reason of the decline in background O3 since 2000 is the decreased above emissions due to some successful regulations by EPA. You can read about it e.g. here. Finally, please note, that background O3 levels might rise very slightly due to AGW (indistinguishable from background noise of local NOX/VOC pollution) the effects of O3 levels on health are non-linear, just like in case of extrere weather events). Therefore locally, especially in large cities, O3 extremes, reinforced by weather extremes will become more serious when mean temperature shifts to the right. Jim Hansen's climate dice analogy also applies here.
  30. Climate skeptic claims prebunked by Keeling
    Oh yes, you can see the variability in the MLO record at one of the links above, with a link to where you can download the hourly data, so no Paul, that dog don't hunt neither http://rabett.blogspot.com.au/2009/10/ian-plimer-is-con-artist-one-of.html
  31. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    Dana, You have the patience of Job cranking out all these counters to WSJ crap. Keep up the good work.
  32. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Sphaerica I'm pretty sure more than 0.6C warming due to GHGs has already been realised.
  33. Lindzen, Happer, and Cohen Wall Street Journal Rerun
    CHL proceed to repeat the grossly oversimplified myth that more CO2 is good for plants:
    "CO2 levels are below the optimum levels for most plants, and there are persuasive arguments that the mild warming and increased agricultural yields from doubling CO2 will be an overall benefit for humanity."
    Given the recent climate impacts on wheat in Russia and corn in the United States, for example, this contrarian argument is a rather large pill to swallow.
    This is an important point, and worth nominating in the form of Sprengel's Law of the Minimum.
  34. New research from last week 33/2012
    Sea level is predicted to rise at least 80cm by 2100 and continues to rise at least 200 years after that
    I'm pleased to see the "...after that" part of the equation getting some attention. There's a lot of talk about "x metres/y degrees by 2100", but these are such arbitrary and transient (to future generations) landmarks that I emphatically believe that we should be reporting the plateaux in temperature and sea level to which the planet is committed, and to which it continually and increasingly becomes committed over time. Don't worry about just our grandchildren - consider the lives of our great-great...great grandchildren, to n generations. They, and the biosphere in which they will live, have a right for us to not FUBAR their existence.
  35. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    Sphaerica @19 I ask because I'm curious (I'm in Australia, so UV and ozone are of concern for me), not to say "ah ha". I had a look at CA readings via the EPA site (http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/weather.html). At the bottom it has 2001-2010 readings per state. This is why I'm curious because observation (so far) does not support the claim. I assume this is another "it's coming, and it's bad" thing?
  36. Climate skeptic claims prebunked by Keeling
    Steve Ryan published a paper on the effect of the volcano on the MLO record. Suffice it to say, slim to none Most impressive are how aircraft measurements match the MLO record over a period of more than a year, showing that MLO does indeed measure CO2 in the free troposphere.
  37. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    18, Dale, I'm just taking a shot at this answer, but... First, we've only seen about 0.6˚C of the 1.4˚C warming to which we have committed, and the likely 2˚C to 4.5˚C for which we are on track. You are unlikely to see an appreciable change in the measurement of ozone (yet) because we haven't yet seen the warming that will help separate the signal from the noise. This is true of a lot of denial reactions. "It hasn't happened yet" is not a valid argument against the proposition that it will happen. Your instinctive search for evidence that it has already happened, followed by an "ah ha" when it hasn't, is a symptom of a case of ostrichitis. Second, and more to the point, the chemistry of ozone creation is fairly clear. It is an endothermic reaction, meaning it requires heat (as well as ultraviolet light). [The reaction is exothermic, however increased temperatures do still increase the rate of reaction.] This means that higher temperatures will increase the rate of reaction, i.e. increase ozone production. California is the perfect testbed. Ozone is already worse in parts of California in the summer months than many places, and California will feel the effects of increased ozone from GW that much more. Ozone is high in California in the summer when skies are clear (letting in the UV) while temperatures are high (speeding the reaction). This is further complicated in California because air inversions are common, which prevent the newly created ozone, as well as pollutants that contribute to its generation, from dispersing. Will everyone everywhere have to worry about ozone? No. Is it an immediate problem, that will affect us right now? No, I don't think so. Is it something that can be ignored? Absolutely not.
  38. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    I've just spent the last hour looking into ozone counts around the world (as I'd heard it was a non-issue in relation to GW). I have to question Agnostic where that information comes from because there are plenty of papers out there showing no trend in ozone in various locations around the world (or a conclusion that no trend is detectable) for decades. Europe especially shows some regions where surface ozone has decreased over the last decade. The only conclusion I can make from looking at numerous papers is that since the mid-70's (when accurate recordings began around the world) it's clear there's no increasing or decreasing trend in surface ozone. Hence why I'm curious how one can conclude that ozone will increase due to GW, when it didn't through the high-climb of the 80's/90's.
  39. New research from last week 33/2012
    Re: "Decrease in biomass burning after year 1500..." I read the abstract and had a thought come to my head, but reading further I found that it was not a new thought. The paper argues against a population collapse driven change in carbon, but I find the coincidence of discovery and disease introduction with the change in carbon flux a bit too much to accept that a steep decline in population had nothing to do with the change in carbon balances. It is a bit too coincidental that the new world is discovered by Europeans, and immediately there is a change in slope on 13C. Can't be sure if I'm looking at a compounding or a confounding.
  40. Global Warming - A Health Warning
    GWS: Yes, you are correct. Anthropogenic precursors for ozone formation are heaviest in areas of dense population resulting in the highest ozone concentration occurring regionally.
  41. IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period
    Following guystone's logic to its final conclusion, the IPCC, in order to avoid publishing "mistakes" (meaning incomplete and uncertain science), should probably not publish another assessment report for at least 50 years or so.
  42. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    203, michaelcomaha, As others have pointed out, this needs to be discussed elsewhere, but before you go there to pursue the topic further (as I hope you will), one key point... Interglacials can last a long time, but their duration is not random. We well today understand the orbital forcings behind the glacial transitions (not completely, no, there are lots of gaps, but well enough). The fact is that temperatures for the current interglacial peaked about 8,000 years ago, then started to decline, and should still be declining on the way into the next glacial period. So while a cursory glance at glacial periods suggests that you can ignore current warming, a closer and more educated view of the subject suggests that your own argument shows that you should be even more alarmed than you might have been before. Beyond this, it is also virtually certain that we have guaranteed that the Earth will skip the next glacial period, in spite of the orbital forcings. CO2 levels will not fall enough to permit another glacial period to completely occur (I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just that it's true).
  43. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    According to my research...
    Although it's a response to an off-topic comment, it has general applicability so I will note that it seems to be a characteristic of many non-scientists that they think that reading a few unreferenced, out-of-context sources constitutes "research". It doesn't. 'Real' research is a systematic and thorough process that involves assessing both a broad and a representative section of the area being studied, and doing so in a manner that minimises any personal bias input. Research also requires some understanding of the basics underpinning the field being investigated,in order that the data acquired is properly analysed. What michaelcomaha did, as so many other non-scientists do who want to pretend at making a scientific point, was to simply cherry-pick one or two factoids with which to construct the illusion of having a clue, and a point. He has neither, because he did no actual, real research. He simply read some stuff.
  44. Carbon - the Huge and Yet Overlooked Fossil Fuel Subsidy
    Hi all. I am one of the people involved in compiling the data on support to fossil fuels in OECD countries (the green ones in the chart). Our numbers pertain cover both production- and consumption-side measures, but pertain only to budgetary expenditures and tax expenditures. The latter account for the bulk of the aggregate values. The IEA numbers pertain only to subsidies provided via policies that artificially lower domestic prices to consumers. So the numbers of the two organizations are not entirely comparable. Also, in respect of the OECD estimates we generally avoid the term "subsidy" (preferring to use the broader term, "support") because tax expenditures feature so dominantly and the reference tax systems differ markedly from one country to another. Hence, if one looks at two countries that exempt farmers from paying fuel tax on diesel, the associated tax expenditure measured in a low-taxing country will be less than that measured in the high-taxing country, even though, overall, consumers pay much higher (after-tax) prices for fuel in the higher-tax country. By the way, the IEA does take into account fuel taxes when deriving its estimates for consumption-related subsidies. Whether to equate externalized costs, including those associated with carbon emissions, with subsidies, is a decades-old debate. Clearly it is valid to speak of the externalized costs of different forms of energy, and to treat those that generate larger externalized costs (externalities) as benefiting from a bigger free ride. However, I disagree with renaming externalities "subsidies". For one, the concept of subsidy is much older than that of externality and it has come to be associated with a transfer of value that is the result of a conscious action of a government. By contrast, externalities exist generally through government INaction. Moreover, most externalities would exist even in a state of anarchy -- indeed. Should a driver of a diesel-fueled truck in Somalia be considered to be "subsidized" because he can emit with impunity? In response to Tom Curtis, I agree that some taxes on transport fuels are, essentially, user charges for roads. So they are not necessarily offsetting externalized costs. Also, as he points out, road accidents (and noise pollution) would exist also for electric vehicles (and those fueled by fuels made from waste materials). But my point on that would be that counting the costs of road accidents and noise pollution (as some other authors have done) as a "subsidy" to petroleum fuels is being selective: they would have to be counted for any vehicles that caused as much injury and property damage or emitted as much noise. One additional problem with rebranding externalities as "subsidies" is that this can confuse the public. In the late 1990s there were several well-publicized studies of environmentally harmful subsidies that included non-internalized externalities in their totals of "subsidies". They then said, "Look at all the environmental damage caused by these $2 trillion a year in subsidies!" Problem was, they were already including the cost of the environmental damage in their subsidy estimates -- i.e., they are double-counting. Finally, I disagree with WheelsOC who claims that Libertarians have no place in their economics for externalities. That is not true of any Libertarians that I know. Libertarians are, however, cautious when it comes to recommending government intervention -- particularly interventions that try to remedy the situation by subsidizing alternatives to polluting activities, and which invariably lead to politicians trying to pick winners (as they did with ethanol). Most Libertarians I know would agree that taxing pollution is, in theory at least, a first-best approach to addressing externalized costs.
  45. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    michaelcomaha, I have responded in a more appropriate place.
  46. Climate's changed before
    michaelcomaha - climate does not change without a cause - conservation of energy etc. The "normal" glacial/interglacial cycle is driven by orbital variations and as such are highly predictable. They vary the distribution and strength of incoming solar energy, something easily measured. On that basis, we should be slightly cooling but instead we are warming. The size of the solar forcing creating the glacial change is also quite predictable and measurable. The man-made GHG forcings though are an order of magnitude higher so little wonder climate is changing so much faster than it does during glaciation.
  47. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    michaelcomaha @203, as Composer @204 notes, your inquiry would be more appropriate in the 'climate's changed before' discussion. However, it's worth briefly noting that the planet had been cooling since about 8,000 years ago until about 150 years ago. While there is warming leading into an interglacial, the interglacial periods themselves are relatively stable and generally slightly cooling.
  48. IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period
    guystone @2 - I find your comment a bit confusing. You would prefer an oversimplified statement like "this was a mistake" (which is not correct, as other comments have pointed out) to a detailed explanation of exactly where the original graph came from and why it was subsequently replaced, as we have provided here? If you're not looking for detailed explanations, I don't think this is the right site to be exploring.
  49. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    michaelcomaha: Your inquiry is off-topic on this post. To point you in the correct direction (both in terms of re-posting your inquiry should you desire and as an answer) please click on the #1 most used climate myth.
  50. IPCC ‘disappeared’ the Medieval Warm Period
    guystone asks:
    Why all the denial, manipulation, excuses, defencevness, or text?! Not this article but anytime the IPCC is questioned[?]
    The answer is quite simple, guystone: since the vast majority of pseudoskeptic criticisms of the IPCC are without merit, or even when meritorious are unreasonably exaggerated, it is worth making the effort to defend the IPCC. IMO your framing of the situation is out of line. The defence of IPCC processes and contributors only appears to be as you characterize it if the pseudoskeptics' inaccurate portrayals are accepted.

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