Climate Science Glossary

Term Lookup

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

Settings

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

Term Lookup

Settings


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

Home Arguments Software Resources Comments The Consensus Project Translations About Support

Bluesky Facebook LinkedIn Mastodon MeWe

Twitter YouTube RSS Posts RSS Comments Email Subscribe


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



Username
Password
New? Register here
Forgot your password?

Latest Posts

Archives

Recent Comments

Prev  1177  1178  1179  1180  1181  1182  1183  1184  1185  1186  1187  1188  1189  1190  1191  1192  Next

Comments 59201 to 59250:

  1. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    Given the minimal cooling following Krakatau (VEI6), I don`t believe for a moment that Maunder was caused by volcanic activity. I am staggered how so few people consider the large changes in the particular output of the Sun in relation to Earth`s temperature variations.
  2. New research from last week 16/2012
    Interesting post, Sphaerica. Thanks.
  3. John Nielsen-Gammon Comments on Continued Global Warming
    Glenn Tamblyn - Quite right, ENSO shifts generally have shorter time-scales, although over the last decade the ENSO pattern matches the apparent decadal slowdown in surface temperatures. Reminds me of grad school - Not ready to graduate? Read another paper! Clearly I need to read some more...
  4. Glenn Tamblyn at 23:19 PM on 2 May 2012
    Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Roger Revelle actually did the fundamental chemical analysis that cracked the question of how much CO2 the oceans would absorb in the late 30's. Howeverthis didn't come to prominence until his paper with Suess in 1957 - Busy year 1957, the International Geophysicl Year. Spencer Weart also comments that the recognition if the implications of Revelle's earlier work in R & S 1957 seems like an after thought, perhaps added at the prompting of reviewers. Perhaps R & S didn't quite want to bite the bullet initially on what their findings meant. Also during this same period Revelle was involved in another study that serendipitously shed light on ocean mixing or the lack thereof. After a US test in the 50's of a Depth Bomb - an atomic depth charge designed to destroy a submarine no matter what - Revelle was on an oceanographic research ship that went back to the test area months later. They took water samples in the region around the balst site. Remnants from the blast had spread out over an area of over 100 sq miles. Not that far when you consider it was months later. But the real find was the vertical distribution of blast products. They were found in a layer in the water only meters thick. Months later! That is a patch of ocean that really, really doesn't want to engage in vertical mixing, even after a Nuclear blast. Strongly suggesting that vertical mixing of heat, chemical changes, dissolved gases etc is quite slow except in regions where vertical currents facilitate mixing. The oceans don't mix things up as much as might be imagined.
  5. Bob Lacatena at 23:03 PM on 2 May 2012
    New research from last week 16/2012
    12, pvincell, Just as a note... despite all of the brouhaha created by the denialsphere, the right way to look at things is not through the prism of supports vs. refutes. The paper you cited, no matter what the results, adds to the body of knowledge on the subject. As such, it does support the model of anthropogenic climate change because everything supports that model, as in "refines and improves" it. The whole problem with the denialsphere is that they keep looking for the "one paper" that will knock the foundation out from under all of the science. They keep hoping it's GCRs or clouds or low sensitivity or whatever, and nothing ever sticks, because even such a paper only serves to "refine and improve" the current theory, not to devalue it. So that is never, ever going to happen. The science is too deep, too broad, and too well founded. At this point one would need a thousand papers overturning a thousand facets of the science. And in the end we're left with what you see... a regular production of papers, each adding incrementally to our knowledge and helping us to sort out exactly what is what.
  6. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    5 - supak Hummm... for the US voting and the Oscars results, the 'truth' is identically people think; whereas the "Global Temperature Anomaly" is what physics does. Just because asking people what they think people think is quite accurate, doesn't mean that asking people what they think physics does will be accurate! Mind you, you should expect a better spread for the latter and therefore better betting options.
  7. New research from last week 16/2012
    Just a note to laud Skeptical Science for posting citations to the occasional papers that seem to not support the model of anthropogenic climate change (the example above being "Tropical Pacific spatial trend patterns in observed sea level: internal variability and/or anthropogenic signature?"). I accept the scientific consensus--I am not disputing the key role of human activities in climate change. I am just acknowledging the scientific integrity of this excellent web site. Scientific credibility depends on open-mindedness to peer-reviewed reports challenging any prevailing consensus. Skeptical Science is a remarkable resource, in part because of it's openness to all relevant peer-reviewed scientific research. You folks have my deep gratitude and respect.
  8. michael sweet at 20:16 PM on 2 May 2012
    Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
    Dana, Good job. It is remarkable how accurate this paper was. As you show, it is difficult now, 30 years later, to determine if Hanasen was right on with his prediction or slightly low. Realclimate recently posted a similar analysis of Hansen 1981. They have similar conclusions to yours. Of course we will get skeptics (on other threads) claiming Climate Theory does not make predictions that can be falsified! Link them to this one!
  9. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    An amendment to my comment @3. On checking my claims, I noticed that the surface temperature of Venus is 735 degrees, K, making it just 447 degrees K (or C) warmer than the Earth. Consequently, if we were to determine climate sensitivity by a simple comparison with Venusian temperatures, we would find a climate sensitivity between 26 and 34 degrees C per doubling of CO2. The 26 degrees is from the fact that it takes 17 doublings of CO2 to exceed the CO2 concentration of Venus if other atmospheric components are held constant, and not simply replaced by CO2. At the 17th doubling, the Earth's atmosphere would have 37 times its current mass, compared to the Venusian atmosphere which has 93 times the mass of Earth's atmosphere.
  10. Glenn Tamblyn at 18:46 PM on 2 May 2012
    John Nielsen-Gammon Comments on Continued Global Warming
    dagold/KR I don't think KR's reply is quite accurate. El Nino/La Nina is associated with changes in warm and cool water, particularly across the Pacific, down to depths of several hundred meters. The Hiatus periods identifed by Meehl et al and showing up in OHC data are comparing roughly 0-700 M vs 0-2000 m. And they operate over timescales longer than ENSO - a decade rather than a year or so. So it is better to regard the hiatus periods as being akin to a deeper and slower ENSO cycle. And that this isn't confined just to the Southern Pacific. They may be related. The Hiatus period cycle could certainly impact on the ENSO cycle, changing the dynamics of it. But they aren't the same thing. But related, possibly.
  11. Lessons from Past Predictions: Hansen 1981
    Thanks Dana! Fascinating stuff, and I wonder if Hansen in '81 had any inkling as to what lengths some would be prepared to go to keep the 'fascinating global geophysical experiment' running! I've yet to receive a reply to a related question from any self-described 'conservative' contrarian: 'What is the conservative position on conducting a radical experiment with the one atmosphere we possess?' I'm surprised this post has been up for so long without receiving flak, given it's about Hansen's projections, which are second only to the hockey stick, surely, as a target of 'skeptic' ire! But no doubt it's coming...
  12. New research from last week 17/2012
    Cheers for that dude.
  13. Ari Jokimäki at 15:03 PM on 2 May 2012
    Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    I also have written about this time period.
  14. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    re - above: Done!
  15. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Indeed, Barry. I'll see if we can place the same link at the end of each of the three parts. Weart's attention to detail is first-rate and if anyone wants to study this story in depth, I can't think of a better place to go. Cheers - John
  16. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Tom, As I understand it, no one has implemented these methods. The problem continues to be that slag is produced on a semicontinuous basis, and you don't want any screwup in energy extraction to affect the production of the steel itself. From my own perspective, the chemical route is interesting, but the kinds of endothermic reactions that could use this degree of heat are best managed in a fully continuous operation. A carousel of tundish operations comes to mind...and it's conceptually not dissimilar to the use of ion-exchange columns in a continuous process. (One is exchanging, one on standby, the third regenerating). (Of course it's not the same, hence the tortured formulation of conceptually not dissimilar).
  17. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Jim @ 1 linked at the bottom of part 1 is the online version of "The Discovery of Global Warming," which is more detailed than the book, and I believe Weart updates it annually. I'm sure you're aware of it, but for anyone else, it's an excellent chronological primer on the subject. http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
  18. muoncounter at 11:59 AM on 2 May 2012
    Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Jeff18: Venus' atmospheric pressure at the surface is 90x that of earth. Supak: What do you mean by 'adding .02 to the yearly temp anomaly'? Is that .02 degrees? That works as a decadal scale average, but annual variation can be much more.
  19. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    I have seen it noted on this site that CO2 is adding about .02 to the yearly temperature anomaly. I am counting on this effect to power my winnings in the Global Temperature Anomaly prediction markets at Intrade. They have monthly and yearly, plus some other climate bets. Intrade is notoriously good on predicting things. For example, the markets correctly predicted the Oscars, getting 93 out of 95 predictions correct. Intrade was correct 92% on Super Tuesday. I encourage everyone to join in as the more people mean better predictions, but be sure to get the deniers you argue with to put their money where their mouths are too, as there just aren't that many sellers. Seems many of them don't believe their own theories enough to bet on it. I thank Neil Degrasse Tyson for pointing out that you can bet on this, when he was on Bill Maher's show. After all, what's the sense in arguing with them if they don't really believe what they're saying.
  20. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Jeff, I don't know whether you were looking over those years, but you should try IPCC WG1 report for starters. How much temperature change for given much change in CO2, is known as climate sensitivity. Search here for that. Remember that radiative response is to log(CO2). Ie you get the same response as going from 200 to 400, as you get from 400 to 800 (or 100 to 200). Secondly, the instantaneous change in forcing directly from CO2 can be directly calculated from the Radiative Transfer Equations but tells only part of the story. The change in temperature from the CO2 induces feedbacks (particularly water vapour, albedo) which further increase temperature. The same physics works for Venus but its not a good analogue because the feedbacks are so different. The feedbacks work over different timescales up to hundreds of years for equilibrium. The IPCC report goes into the detail and links back to the relevant papers.
  21. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    Jeff18: 1) The albedo of Venus is much higher than that of Earth, with the result that Venus absorbs less energy from sunlight than does the Earth; 2) Temperature does not increase linearly with CO2 concentration, but rather it increases linearly for each doubling of CO2 concentration. 100% atmospheric concentration represents 12 to 13 doublings of CO2. Therefore based on your simple method, one doubling of CO2 should result in 800/13 = 61.5 degrees C temperature increase. 3) The actual figure for doubling CO2 is the far less disastrous 3 degrees C. The figure is much lower because: a) The more even temperatures on Venus also contribute slightly to increased temperature; b) (more importantly), the much greater atmospheric density on Venus contributes significantly to increased temperatures; and c) The greenhouse effect contributes significantly more to the temperature of Venus than the simple formula for the radiative forcing of CO2 would indicate, that formula only being accurate for a few doublings or halvings of CO2 concentration relative to current levels on Earth. Despite the difficulties represented by (a), (b), and (c) above, models of the greenhouse effect have been shown to predict Venutian surface temperatures for Venutian atmospheric conditions since 1980.
  22. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Dana1981 That may be purpose of a climate conference, but as Copenhagen was not a success we are back to the situation i described where nations are clearly making decisions to optimise their own position ie doing nothing, or lobbying for grants
  23. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    I have been looking for answer to this carbon dioxide question for a few years. Exactly how much CO2 change will cause how much temperature rise? The only real data I could find is the planet Venus. Let us assume the atmosphere is 100% CO2. (It is almost). For round numbers, the temperature is 800 degrees warmer than earth. Let us ignore for now the fact that Venus is closer to the sun and atmospheric pressure (thus CO2 content) is 15 time greater than earth. I will also assume the rate of change of temperature and CO2 is linear. If anyone has any data that differs, I would like to know about it. So, 100% is 800 degrees warmer, 1% would be 8 degrees warmer. And, .01% (100ppm) would be .08 degrees warmer. If you consider that Venus is closer to the sun and the pressure is higher, that further reduce the effect of CO2. It would seem by the above that the effect of CO2 is small. Comments Please. -Jeff
  24. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    steve from virginia @45, in fact the system of dumping waste into the streets did involve an enterprise, and Alley clearly states. Specifically, "In the early 1800s, night-soil haulers in places such as London, Paris and Edinburgh removed the human output to the countryside, where it was used as fertilizer." (p216) He later goes on to discuss the potential implications this had on decision making to switch to modern sewage systems. It speaks ill for your case that you must continually misrepresent the contents of Alley's video and book in order to make it. More directly to your case, the loss of asset value following new inventions is never a consideration in the deployment of that invention, or at least it should not be. The invention of electronic calculators made the technology for mechanical adding machines largely obsolete. That was not a reason to forbid the manufacture and sale of electronic calculators, despite the loss of asset value for patent holders and makers of mechanical adding machines. Nor, in an earlier period, was the potential loss of employment to stable hands, and loss in asset value for horse breeders a reason for Henry Ford to not make the model T. In like manner, the loss of "asset value" of fossil fuels is no reason to not shift to renewables. This is particularly the case in that the supposed asset value of those fossil fuels consists largely in the fact that private enterprise gets to internalize the value of the benefits of the fossil fuels, while society at large is expected to pay the costs. Where the costs, including the costs of the full impact of global warming, where internalized to the producers of fossil fuels, the "asset value" of their reserves would be much smaller, and possibly even constitute a net debt, with each gallon of oil pumped impoverishing the oil producer, even before the costs of pumping it were included. People would be a lot wiser in economic decisions if they realized that "assets" and "debts" are mutually agreed upon fictions. They have no material existence, but rather consist solely of agreements made between people. Those fictions are often very useful fictions, but if you reify them you get Great Depressions, Global Financial Crises, and if we accept steve from virginia's analysis, the persistence in a ruinous policy because people with poor foresight, and a poorer conscious, decided to invest in fossil fuels rather than renewables. Well, the economic consequences of their unwise investment are their problems, not ours.
  25. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Realist @52:
    "Surely you are not suggesting Copenhagen was a success?"
    No, if I was going to suggest it was a success, I would call it a success. I'm talking about the purpose of international climate conferences, not their success rate. Realist @53:
    "Tragedy of the commons is the same as what economists describe as a competitive marketplace."
    No, it's not. You could argue that it's an unfortunate aspect of a competitive marketplace, but the two are not equivalent.
  26. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Dave123, thanks for the reference. Here is the abstract of Barati et al:
    "Molten slags represent one of the largest untapped energy sources in metal manufacturing operations. The waste heat of slags amounting to ∼220 TWh/year at temperatures in the range of 1200–1600 °C, presents an opportunity to lower the energy intensity of metal production. Currently, three types of technologies are under development for utilizing the thermal energy of slags; recovery as hot air or steam, conversion to chemical energy as fuel, and thermoelectric power generation. The former route is most developed with its large scale trials demonstrating recovery efficiencies up to 65%. The latter two are emerging as the next generation methods of waste heat recovery. An evaluation of these methods shows that for both thermal and chemical energy recovery routes, a two-step process would yield a high efficiency with minimal technical risk. For thermoelectric power generation, the use of phase change materials appears to solve some of the current challenges including the mismatch between the slag temperature and operating range of thermoelectric materials."
    The current ability to recover of 65% of waste heat as energy, I think, effectively rebuts realist @36.
  27. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Tragedy of the commons is the same as what economists describe as a competitive marketplace.
  28. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Dana1981 Surely you are not suggesting Copenhagen was a success? If so by what measure?
  29. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Steve- Please put some numbers to paper.... you're as amorphous as any climate change denier. At 132000 TWhr/yr 2008 Energy Utilization, I can invest with present $ and technology in wind power, and let's say we did 500Billion/year...vs my calculation above that gets us over 1 terrawatt per year....and in 50 years we're around 1/2 way there from wind alone. It's just resource allocation. If we were faced with a 4th of July style alien invasion is there any doubt we could rassle up as much money as we wanted to? War powers do odd things to financial systems. Now if we only had a room temperature super conductor.
  30. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Dana1981 If so, by what measure?
  31. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    oops those are page numbers 5540-5499. don't know where the e came from.
  32. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Thanks to Phil, I've found I misquoted the review article...it's 200 TWh/year energy in steel slag. Based on some other numbers, those 6 Megawatt wind turbines would generate about 18 gigawatthrs/year. (Scaled from a 1.5 Meg machine at 35% operating capacity) Thus we only need about 11,111 of them. I'm seeing costs of about $1.30 per watt installed [link] for an expenditure of about $87 billion we can use wind power to cover the energy in slag....assuming I haven't messed up again. So for a little more than 10% of the current US military budget, we could do quite a bit with state of the art machines. For everyone playing around with slag....getting the energy out of it is harder...nice review article here: Barati et. al. Energy 36 (2011) 5440e5449 Unfortunately behind a paywall. You can probably see the abstract. Bear in mind anything you do has to be fool proof, steel companies don't like taking their mills up and down. And as for what you do with the cool slag...the problem has mainly to do with location and transportation costs vs other materials that you can put into concrete and other applications.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Embedded link that was breaking page format.
  33. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Dana1981 Surely you are not suggesting Copenhagen was a success?
  34. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Realist @44 - what you're describing is a form of the Tragedy of the Commons, and is why we have international climate conferences, to get all nations on board with emissions reductions.
  35. steve from virginia at 07:03 AM on 2 May 2012
    Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Alley's supposition is incorrect because it does not include the economic effect of a successful conversion on competitors. There is no factor in the calculation that represents the dumping of waste into Edinburgh streets, it was never an enterprise and could never compete against sewers: the fuel wasting enterprise on the other hand is the world's largest and represents the greatest part of world GDP. How can removing the fuel waste be cost free? Removing the waste is the object of the exercise, right? :) After all, if the renewables cannot eliminate fuel waste and its associated enterprises there is no point to the renewables. This is a competition between regimes. The implication is that all of the waste dependencies can remain as they are now but with different 'green' prime movers. This is false because all the dependencies are wasteful and polluting in their own right. What Prof Alley might suggest is that the replacement cost of new renewables versus new conventional prime movers is similar in $$$/kjoule. What happens is prime movers are aggregated according to operational characteristics within the wasting regime: intermittancy, base-load, etc. Wind farms do not replace reactors, they are added to them. For the purpose of removing atmospheric gases the entire waste enterprise must be eliminated. All the related costs including that of sunk capital must be calculated in addition to the cost of prime movers. Far from being easy or inexpensive, reconfiguration energy regime will be the hardest thing the human race has ever attempted in its entire existence. It is vital that we look at our endeavor this way so as to prepare ourselves for the crushing struggle to come. The future does not have any cars in it. There will be no conveniences, only shared struggle, hunger, perhaps much violence and deprivation. We lack the basic social infrastructures needed to cope with difficulties: our leadership and institutions are formed from mechanical and financial leverage. We are used to pushing buttons on the remote, for hiring others to solve our problems while we relax. The future has no relax in it. We cannot get a grip on our climate, fuel, food, water and other resource problems without acknowledging there will be large trade-offs and sacrifices. We cannot 'have it all'. We give up something or industrialization kills us (and itself in the process). Since industrialization is already unraveling (it doesn't pay for itself) we may as well go with the flow. What this means is the centralized, industrial forms of renewables are not likely to be deployed at a meaningful level. We cannot afford large-scale renewables already: the entire world has bankrupted itself the 'old- fashioned way' leaving nothing in the account books but debts. True enough, some is better than none, but when the credit is gone and the ginormous windmill breaks who will pay to repair it? The model here: Detroit.
  36. Murry Salby - Confused About The Carbon Cycle
    desertphile - a nitpick but evidence to date would say that LIA was indeed a global event, though less marked in SH than in NH.
  37. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    @43 The problem with the argument that it's cheaper to act now is that all nations know its even cheaper to let everyone else act first. The longer an individual nation delays acting the cheaper it is for that nation. Of course the absolute cheapest is to get others to pay or subsidies your renewable energy (Copenhagen?).
  38. muoncounter at 06:29 AM on 2 May 2012
    It's satellite microwave transmissions
    TOP: "For the most part the atmosphere is transparent to microwaves." Indeed. That should make the concept of atmospheric heating by microwave emission vanish into the ether.
  39. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    steve from virginia - What Alley is pointing out is that conversion to a fossil fuel free economy would cost about the same proportion of GDP as converting open sewer ditches into our current waste handling systems. With respect to the auto industry, my personal view is that one of the better approaches is solar->methanol style fuel production, such as described here. Methanol or ethanol can easily be burned in current vehicles with minor conversions, and if the fuel is generated from electrolyzed hydrogen and CO2 using renewable power it's carbon neutral. The same goes for renewable-created methane or other gaseous fuels, although those require more expensive conversions. Conversions that would not, I'll note, trash the auto industry. As to your "costs too much" argument, I would refer you to the discussions on the economic impacts of carbon pricing and Renewable energy is too expensive threads. Acting now is far less expensive than waiting.
  40. steve from virginia at 05:02 AM on 2 May 2012
    Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Hmmm ... This is easy: Professor Alley supposes that renewable energy generators can replace conventional, fossil fuel waste at a negligible cost. Either renewables replace fossil fuel waste or they don't. - If they don't there is no point to renewables as the fuel waste enterprises will carry on as before, wasting fuel and loading carbon into the atmosphere. Fossil fuel waste will take place alongside the renewables (and their own embedded fossil fuel waste). See 'Jevon's Paradox': the demand for more energy to waste is insatiable. - If renewables DO replace fossil fuel waste the losses to the wasting enterprises will far exceed the cost of the renewables themselves. The auto industry and its dependencies: the fuel supply- real estate- finance- construction- defense- retail and the rest represent 60% + of GDP. As has been seen across the US economy, reducing funds to- or cutting one dependency has effects that ripple across the whole. - Meanwhile, the current level of economic 'cash flow' (which is what GDP represents) is what both enables and services the economy's debts. Renewables therefor cannot replace fossil fuel waste, instead they require fuel waste as a (credit) subsidy. The same way the sales of electric- and hybrid cars is internally subsidized within the auto industry by the sales of mega-SUVs and massive pickup trucks. No truck sales, no electric cars b/c they are too expensive. Speak of: the only pollution solutions must include getting rid of the cars, all of them along with car-related dependencies. Believe it or not, the market is already solving the 'car problem'. Europe is right now in the process of becoming car-free ... the hard way. GDP cost? Massive. Look to Greece ... then Somalia ... for the future of Europe, then Japan, China and the US. Cutthroat fuel competition using credit as a weapon is happening now under everyone's noses and few are paying attention. There is nothing anyone can do to halt or unwind the process, either.
  41. It's satellite microwave transmissions
    @jmorpuss Regarding amateur radio you are picking at gnats. Amateur radio stations do not often operate at 1.5kw PEP and when they do it is at lower frequencies that would not likely cause response to the species in the atmosphere. The PEP requirement means that the actual power used is dependent on the modulation and represents any where from 41% to 100% of the PEP power. The higher amateur bands (VHF, UHF, microwave) where a measurable atmospheric response might happen near the antenna, the power levels are kept low simply because propagation is usually line of site except in rare instances (tropo ducting, Sporadic E, meteor scatter and EME). High gain antennas are usually used to get results. And of course in the amateur service, the rule is to use the least amount of power necessary to carry on communication. You simply can't use ERP additively since ERP is simply accounting for the gain in the antenna. Gain is simply the ability of the antenna to take the power presented to it and compress it into a smaller volume so that less transmitter power is needed. On UHF frequencies where the ERP might be 10MW for TV the antenna also might have 20Db gain which means that only 10kw is being radiated. The big difference between amateur service and broadcast is that broadcast is typically in operation 24/7 while amateur stations may be operated a few hours a night a few nights a month. And that fluctuates according to the sunspot cycle. The cell phone service operates at frequencies that will cause heating of water vapor in the atmosphere (3G, 4G, GSM), but they are supposedly low power and are not expected to cover an area much larger than 20 miles, usually much smaller. @21 muoncounter ATT still uses microwave transmission for local service within states. There is an ATT microwave tower in operation within site if this laptop. Longhaul may have been killed by fiber and satellite, but many of the towers are still active. In addtion to ATT there are now numerous microwave links privately operated in lieu of purchasing T1 and T3 connectivity over short hauls (20 miles or so). L band is in the 3.5 micron range which has a high transmittance in the atmosphere. For the most part the atmosphere is transparent to microwaves.
  42. Two Centuries of Climate Science: part two - Hulburt to Keeling, 1931- 1965
    John, thanks so much for compiling this history of the science in one easy to access place, or ultimately three places. No longer will I have to thumb back and forth through my dog-eared copy of Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming.
  43. Climate Scientists take on Richard Lindzen
    We'll be doing a post on this NY Times cloud/Lindzen article in the near future. It is a good article and really lays out the problem with listening to "skeptics" like Lindzen. As Stephen @49 notes, it also highlights that Lindzen is unable to consider the true consequences if (when) we learn that he's wrong, if we heed his advice and fail to act in the meantime.
  44. citizenschallenge at 02:40 AM on 2 May 2012
    Lessons from Past Predictions: Vinnikov on Arctic Sea Ice
    Great article Dana! FYI ~ It's another one I couldn't resist bootlegging {with attribution ;-)} over at my WhatsUpWithThatWatts blog. SkS: “Poor Pielke Analysis”. . . Dear Dr. Pielke can you explain? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ an excerpt from my introduction to your post: "{...} Contrarian-skeptics {as opposed to Informed-skeptics} are slippery fish to catch, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I think I caught a floppy one yesterday. {...} Additionally, rather than examine long-term Arctic sea ice "death spiral," Dr. Pielke chose to instead focus on short-term noise. "However, since 2006, the reduction has stopped and even reversed. Perhaps this is a short term event and the reduction of sea ice extent will resume. Nonetheless, the reason for the turn around, even if short term...needs an explanation." The explanation is that Dr. Pielke's Eyecrometer has failed him. An actual statistical analysis of the NSIDC data tells a different story (Figure 4). . . {...}" =============== Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. says "Nonetheless, the reason for the turn around, even if short term...needs an explanation." WHY? Why does the short term fluctuation need an explanation beyond the very reasonable explanations already supplied by mainstream climatologists? Can anyone help Pielke explain “Exactly what is wrong with the climatologist’s explanation?” WHAT DEGREE OF RESOLUTION IS Dr. Pielke EXPECTING ? WHY? What justifies demanding a bridge builder’s “engineering level resolution” as opposed to a reasonable "Earth science’s level of resolution"? What point is he trying to make? I ask because to me it seems like just more of the crazy-making contrarians love to inject into what should be a learning process. Isn’t the issue that NEEDS attention GHG’s salting of our planet’s atmosphere, with it’s resulting insulating effect? It is that simple! That atmospheric insulting effect isn't going to change itself over the short term. Why won't Dr. Pielke acknowledge that our grand experiment is producing results coming in faster and with more fury than any experts anticipated ! ? {...} Cheers, CC
  45. Stephen Baines at 02:05 AM on 2 May 2012
    Climate Scientists take on Richard Lindzen
    CBD Yes, its ironic that an real live example of accurate reporting of the news has me suddenly wondering if maybe there are such things as unicorns and Santa Claus! Gillis has been doing yoeman's work reestablishing what true journalistic balance should be about (as opposed to lazy he said-she said balance). It has become so rare in the mainstream media that seeing it now is just plain disorienting. If I were to quibble (and it is indeed a quibble) it's that he provides a lot more specifics about Lindzen's arguments than he does for the arguments against reduced climate sensitivity via the Iris effect. The arguments against are cast in a more general light. That can leave the impression that Lindzen's ideas are somehow more coherent and that mainstream scientists are being sourpusses. Nothing could be further from the case. I love Lindzen's quote near the end. “If I’m right, we’ll have saved money...If I’m wrong, we’ll know it in 50 years and can do something.” Of course, if Lindzen was wrong, we wouldn't be able to do anything about because climate sensitivity will be high and the effects will substantial and long lasting. What I think he meant was ... “If I’m right, we’ll have saved money, but if I’m right , we’ll know it in 50 years and can do something.” To state it simply, to me its clear that he simply can't imagine a scenario where he is wrong. And people claim mainstream climate scientists are arrogant! As Kerry Emmanuel states at the end, "...it just seems deeply unprofessional and irresponsible to look at this and say, ‘We’re sure it’s not a problem.'"
  46. Richard Alley - We Can Afford Clean Energy
    Via a comment on Stoat I ran into this post by Tom Murphy: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ He doesn't really touch on the ideas that I was poking at further up on this thread, until near the end of the third post in the series, but all are very much worth reading. I'm sure that ol' Albert would approve... For those who venture to Tom's posts, there's one point worth dwelling on. Consider the last figure in third post, that is, the figure titled "Western lifestyle for all may require a vastly larger renewable footprint still". Note how Murphy depicts global energy consumption to date as the area under the grey peak to the left of the asterix. Compare that to the green area of the figure, which basically represents an energy business-as-usual into the future, but based on renewables. Then consider that that iddy-biddy grey area of energy consumption to the left of that asterix is responsible for bringing the planet to its current state of resource/ environment/biodiversity depletion. And then consider what the green area means for future resource 'sustainability', taking into account Tom's explanation about efficiency limits. And if we are going to bring the 'Other 80%' onboard to share equitably in the party (the blue area of the figure) - well... This is why simply converting to renewables is only a part of an answer that has to come very quickly, if there is to be any dignified future for our children and grandchildren, and for their decendants.
  47. John Nielsen-Gammon Comments on Continued Global Warming
    Old mole @20 - there are ENSO predictions which go about 9 months into the future, so we do have some idea how it will change in the near term. This is discussed in my post linked in comment 13.
  48. desertphile at 01:44 AM on 2 May 2012
    Murry Salby - Confused About The Carbon Cycle
    Salby mentioned the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, neither of which were global events, and then claimed that CO2 followed temperature; these assertions have been refuted and debunked by scores of scientists. Murry Salby needs to update himself in the current literature. Note that our New Galileo here also ignored the fact that humans are currently putting 30,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere EVERY YEAR, yet the non-human sources put in AND THEN REMOVE the same, or very similar, amounts of CO2 that they do every year. Just where does Mr. Salby believe our release of CO2 is going?
  49. muoncounter at 23:37 PM on 1 May 2012
    It's satellite microwave transmissions
    jmorpuss#13: "Radio waves exite the oxygen molecule to propagate" Doesn't that mean molecular oxygen absorbs radio waves? So I guess microwave and radio are very poor means of long distance communication. Is that why ATT gave up on microwave telecomm links (4-8 Ghz) after a mere 40 years of commercial use? And is that why Iridium (~1620 Mhz) went bankrupt? And it's certainly ironic that all those long distance radars (1-4 Ghz) at airports and weather stations around the world are broadcasting energy that is absorbed by the atmosphere. Waste energy, indeed.
  50. It's satellite microwave transmissions
    All clear now, scaddenp? :) You see, if you concentrate that .000005 W/m2, then it turns into 1.5 W/m2 over the same area. That's just the way it is, and denying it will just make you a denialist, and clearly you don't want to be one of those. And the tropospheric hotspot and clouds are the result of the dust moving from one place in the atmosphere (where the particles did not create clouds) to another place in the atmosphere (where they did create clouds), attracted by the magnetic flux created by the criss-crossing satellite microwave power beams that get amplified by the . . . the . . . ionosphere or something. The resulting friction from this forced travel also creates global warming. And these clouds that form never formed before microwaves were invented (by Al Gore), and now there are lots of these clouds (all different shapes, too -- lions, dragons, etc.) that create both a warming and cooling effect. Meanwhile, the ionosphere, which is full of water, is forming a plastic bag which serves as a parabola which heats up the Earth's core (the focal point of the parabola) and creates even more global warming. By the way, the CO2-warming connection (boy, what a CRAZY theory that is!) and any science-based criticisms of my theories are hoaxes perpetrated by greedy scientists and the Masters of the Universe, who live in a cave in the Himalayas and stand on their heads all day, saying "doh!"

Prev  1177  1178  1179  1180  1181  1182  1183  1184  1185  1186  1187  1188  1189  1190  1191  1192  Next



The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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