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  1265  1266  1267  1268  1269  1270  1271  1272  1273  1274  1275  1276  1277  1278  1279  1280  Next

Comments 63601 to 63650:

  1. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    One difference between the NIPCC and IPCC I didn't mention in the post is that the IPCC report is extensively reviewed, and anybody can comment on its contents. Obviously neither is true of the NIPCC report.
  2. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    michael @12 - thanks. The 2011 interim NIPCC report is 432 pages. Dennis @14 - I would imagine that climate scientists would view rebutting the NIPCC report as a waste of time, since nobody outside climate denialists takes it seriously (for the reasons discussed in the post above, and because it's not a peer-reviewed publication). In fact I never even see climate denialists reference it, until now that is.
  3. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Martin @219 This was carried in the NYT on page 12 or something a couple of days ago. Still, you're point is probably correct. My sense is that it isn't seen as news because most journalists and editors have always known what the true nature of HI is - that of a counter-information campaign whose purpose is to muddy scientific justification for regulation. It is an agenda driven PR effort, not an attempt to get at objective truth. The travesty is that, given that knowledge, credible outlets still give them a hearing as if they represent a valid scientific opinion rather than a partisan voice. This gives the impression that scientists also constitute a block of people with a similarly partisan voice, rather than a community of people following a completely different path -- simply struggling to understand the world using the scientific method. As a society we've been so entrained into he he said/she said, horse-race approach to describing conflict that most cannot see the difference. Re communication...The fact that the scientific community is actually a diverse hodgepodge of people that is not motivated by partisan issues is the very reason we are not good at communicating this stuff. Effective communication in mainstream media requires a coherent, sharpened message. The less nuance the better. Partisan or special interest groups simply have the advantage there because they can dispense with the nuance to serve a purpose. Our prupose is harmed by doing so. Now evolution and climate change should represent cases where the scientific community can unite to communicate better because the consensus is so overwhleming. However, the lack of a partisan agenda is something that filters down to the very structure of our institutions; the dearth of support for effective communication and the in consistency in messaging between institutions is a product of the scientific mission. That communication leadership will have to come from umbrella organizations or outside the scientific community.
  4. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    Ken Lambert - "You can't have both an increasing warming imbalance and a stasis in surface temperatures." Sure you can! Surface temperatures are but one (small) portion of the globe being heated. See the excellent thread for Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still! - deep ocean temperatures are still rising, and the atmospheric and SST energies are only a fractional segment of the energy storage. Now, if the atmospheric, SST, and the deep ocean stopped warming, and loss of cryosphere stopped, then and only then, when considering all of the masses involved, the entire climate system, could you conclude that the warming imbalance has stopped.
  5. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    Ken wrote: "Trenberth's position on the stasis of surface temperatures conflicts with Hansen's position. It is not a minor factor as CBD is suggesting, because these two scientists are central players in the AGW story." Umm... both deep ocean heating and aerosol cooling are "minor factors" because they are small compared to other components of the ongoing temperature rise. I really couldn't care less how much 'political significance' you assign to them as theories held by "central players". That's a truly meaningless issue for purposes of understanding the science.
  6. Dikran Marsupial at 02:15 AM on 18 February 2012
    The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    Ken, it is dissapointing that you should respond to my post asking for a calmer discussion in a tone likely to irritate "semantic confection", and by ignoring my advice that you shoud freely admit wehen you are shown to be in error. Note I did not say that it was a "big error", just that it was an error. If you feel it was instead a minor error, then why not just admit to it? This is not a venue for rhetorical debate, it is a venue for discussion of the science. Discussion of science requires that one sets out their position unambiguously, which requires admitting error and reformulating the position when some issue (no matter how minor) is found to be in error. Your last paragraph is also in error, and is a point that has been made repeatedly. Surface temperatures are a small component of where the energy budget imbalance shows up. It is perfectly consistent to have an increasing warming imbalance and a stasis in surface temperatures if ocean circulation has been redistributing sufficient heat. Read the paper by Easterling and Wehner (2009) on this subject.
  7. The Year After McLean - A Review of 2011 Global Temperatures
    CBD and DM Your semantic confection of some sort of 'big error' on my part does not disguise the real points, to wit: McLeans prediction was wide of the mark and I have never argued for it. Trenberth's position on the stasis of surface temperatures conflicts with Hansen's position. It is not a minor factor as CBD is suggesting, because these two scientists are central players in the AGW story. Trenberth says that the imbalance at TOA is still about 0.9W/sq.m globally after all aerosol effects are accounted for; and Hansen plumbs for about 0.6W/sq.m mainly due to the increased reflection caused by Chinese aerosols and other factors (delayed Pinitubo effect etc). Hansen's figure is supported by recent OHC measurement whereas Trenberth is still looking for the missing heat. The warming imbalance is directly relevant to the surface temperature trend from Figs 2 and 3 above. It is heading for 14 years since the El Nino surface temperature of 1998 and several ENSO cycles and one 11 year sun cycle yet nothing much is happening to surface temperatures despite claims of an increasing warming imbalance. You can't have both an increasing warming imbalance and a stasis in surface temperatures.
  8. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    219 - Martin "Could this be due to the probably faked document?" With respect, that's missing the point. The reason things like not just the CRU emails but any little bit of research hits the media is because the 'denial' side has a machine in place to do that. Academic climate research has no such machine. Occasionally universities will do a press release - one amongst many that universities send to the media. And sites like DesMog and SkS etc. post stuff up... it's no where near as professional! IMHO, also, media outlets like news papers, forbs etc. know that a good juicy AGW article gets lots of comments. Comments mean page views, page views mean advertising... the more outrageous, the more anger provoking the better the advertising income... I recon that's the core success of the Tea Party.
  9. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    mistigrl, It may well have been reported to the Chicago Police (who would say nothing, to protect their investigation), but that the FBI had no grounds for jurisdiction (except for the timestamp on the scanned PDF, there's no evidence that the activity crossed state boundaries... I don't know what the rules are there, but it may well be that simple procedure here is to let the local authorities handle it until they go to the feds). It's also a question whether or not a crime has been committed, even if it was done by phishing. Identity theft laws are fairly new. In Illinois, for instance, the existing laws on the books all seem to focus on monetary gain. They are fairly explicit not merely about the act of impersonating someone, but also the intent and outcome. Illinois: Identify Theft Law 2006 94-0827 Note that one must argue in the underlined section below that receiving copies of original documents (which the owner still retains -- they haven't been "stolen" in that the owner still possesses them) constitutes "obtaining other property" in an actionable sense. Since the intent of the law is clearly to prevent one party from stealing things of monetary value from another, I would strongly question its applicability in this case.
    (a) A person commits the offense of identity theft when he or she knowingly: (1) uses any personal identifying information or personal identification document of another person to fraudulently obtain credit, money, goods, services, or other property, or (2) uses any personal identification information or personal identification document of another with intent to commit any felony theft or other felony violation of State law not set forth in paragraph (1) of this subsection (a), or (3) obtains, records, possesses, sells, transfers, purchases, or manufactures any personal identification information or personal identification document of another with intent to commit or to aid or abet another in committing any felony theft or other felony violation of State law, or...
    Public Act 094-0036 Applicability of the above law almost works, because the "thief" stole the names of people. But the law states that those names must explicitly be tied to SS numbers or credit card or bank account numbers. As they have not, the law does not apply. I'm not a lawyer, and I've only done some quick googling, so maybe there is a law somewhere that applies. But there is no clear answer that any crime has been committed, even if the documents were obtained by phishing.
  10. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    This story hasn't made it to a lot media outlets. A few newspapers, that's all. My impression was that the story about hacked emails achieved a wide distribution quite rapidly. Could this be due to the probably faked document?
  11. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Given the attention Heartland is getting right now, I wish that some climate scientists out there (unfortunately, I'm not one) had put together a comprehensive, single rebuttal of the NIPCC document, going line-by-line on the errors in the document's science, and then adding the key important scientific details Heartland conveniently ignores and why they matter. The NIPCC is the only thing close to a scientific document that deniers can mention (that I'm aware of) as a "rebuttal" to the science. I've read plenty of good, scientific rebuttals to the NIPCC, but it's all been piecemeal at various websites. A good, detailed explanation of why it is so wrong would go a long way to being the nail in the coffin of the denier's scientific arguments, and it could be publicly presented to policy makers who endorse Heartland.
  12. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Tom, I don't think the Australian definition of fraud is particularly applicable here. In the strictest sense what you are saying is true, but in reality, proving something like that in a court of law in the USA becomes very, very hard. Free speech is protected to an extreme, and that includes lying. I imagine that in order to be prosecuted first you'd have to find someone who wanted to press charges, and that would be someone who gave them money and felt cheated. How likely is that? Then they'd have to prove they wouldn't have given money otherwise, and that he knowingly lied for the sole purpose of getting their money (for instance, he could argue that he was just trying to save face for his institution and prevent people from balking at giving money that they would otherwise have given). Fraud in the USA is pretty much out as an applicable crime. Obstruction of justice (lying to the police) in any fashion, on the other hand, is taken very seriously, and is often used to punish people who can't be found guilty of their crimes. "Yeah, sure, we know he killed 23 people, but we can't prove a single on of them. But we can prove that he lied about being in Seattle the day of the first murder, so we've got him on obstruction of justice!" But even there: (a) He must have reported it to the police (and he is welcome to lie about having reported it without actually doing so, although a lie like that will eventually bite him). (b) Someone must prove that it was not a phishing attack. (c) Someone must prove that he knew it was not a phishing attack (and if he's not very tech-savvy, then it's easy enough to claim it until he's blue in the face, with the defense that he never really understood what he was talking about). (d) He must not be so arrogant as to believe that he can get away with anything. (e) He must not have strong enough connections in business, politics, and government that lets him get away with anything. Note that on (b), proving that it was not a phishing attack... that may not be too hard. I mean, it should be trivially easy to prove that it was a phishing attack, unless they hire a cyber-security expert to properly fake the e-mail trail (and the embedded timezone stamp in the scanned PDF gives you some clue as to how tricky that can be). So if he really has engaged the police/FBI, and it really was a phishing attack, they are sure of that already... but won't say a word while they follow the trail (identify the actual e-mail server, subpoena server log files there and along the way, etc.).
  13. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    CBDunkerson: Their activity with the Angry Badger project (helping the governor of Wisconsin fight off a recall effort) could be beyond the scope for a tax-exempt non-profit of their type. That should really be investigated.
  14. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    The Atlantic article makes a good case (except for an inexplicable erroneous tangent on the history of human chromosome research) and, along with other issues discussed in this thread, makes it seem likely that the strategy memo was faked. Which, if true, is just annoying. Where does this impulse to muck up important revelations by introducing an element of fraud that allows the whole thing to be questioned come from? It will be interesting to see whether we hear anything further about a police investigation. I think alot of us have a natural inclination to view Heartland's moral bankruptcy as inevitably tied to illegalities which would prevent them from going to the police. However, given the continual weakening of laws against 'influence peddling' in the US Heartland's actions may well be perfectly 'legitimate'... which is a whole other kind of depressing.
  15. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    mistigiri: Standard procedure: They're never going to confirm or deny. The only reason they disavowed the Strategy doc was that it made them look too bad (in addition to probably being faked).
  16. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    nealjking, yes, I'd seen the Atlantic article. I'm inclined to agree with Richard Littlemore on desmogblog, that it's up to HI to provide evidence that the strategy document was faked, or that the other documents have been altered. On the HI website they are still claiming that the "authenticity of those documents has not yet been confirmed". I think it's legitimate to ask why not.
  17. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Why do people still pay more for things that are advertised more? Because repetition works, even if the stated facts are wrong, even if they are irrelevant. That is why they just keep repeating those debunked old myths. People assume that nobody in their right mind would keep repeating debunked stories .. so if they do, it seems that there must be something in their repetition. And if you say that these guys are in some kind of conspiracy to spread debunked stories .. that makes you look like a conspiracy theorist, doesn't it?
  18. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    I wonder what's the reason for the "tropical thermostat" argument being put forward by AGW 'sceptics' like Roger Pielke Sr. et all. Because they want to downplay global warming we're facing? No, that does not make sense. Because, in fact, this argument does not support the 'sceptic' point of view, which seeks the "it's not bad", "the temp rise will not be as high as predicted" type of conclusion. According to this argument, if the ocean cannot warm-up above the current limit in the tropics, then where will the extra heat generated from the eccess CO2 go? It will not "evaporate into space" but stay in the system. Given that simple observation, and all other factors assumed equal, that extra heat will likely end up in the atmosphere. So the land, on which we inhabit would become hotter, a lot hotter, because of far lower energy capacity of air. So, the global warming as measured by LST would be much higher. So, I would call the proponents of such "SST thermostat" theory the "extreme warmists".
  19. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Dana, Excellent article. How long is the NIPCC report?
  20. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    mistigiri: An article in The Atlantic gives cogent reasons, based on study of the content of the Strategy document, that it is probably fake: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/leaked-docs-from-heartland-institute-cause-a-stir-but-is-one-a-fake/253165/ It's worth reading.
  21. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Yes, you would have to have just half a brain to think that Heartland are sincere. I'm sure even the "skeptics" don't really think that Heartland is anything more than a lobby group putting out disinformation.
  22. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Woody @ 19 - CO2 is a well-mixed gas in the atmosphere. Therefore it's affect on the 'cool skin' layer of the ocean is global in scale, and more or less, uniform. And no, it is not stronger at the tropics than at the poles. That asymmetry is a function of the more intense heating that occurs at the equator, due to the more intense sunlight there. A useful way of thinking about it, is similar to the way greenhouse gases work in the atmosphere - trapping heat and letting less escape to space. The same principle is at work in the ocean - greenhouse gases trap more heat in the ocean and less is able to escape to the atmosphere.
  23. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Guardianista2012 @ 7 - "What stops the heat from rising rapidly?" Not sure I understand the question, but I'll have a stab and assume you're talking about why global warming, and particularly ocean warming, doesn't occur rapidly by human timescales. That's because the forcing by greenhouse gases grows gradually every year as we burn more fossil fuels. This is, however, obscured by natural variability in the climate system - El Nino/La Nina, the solar (sun spot) cycle for instance.
  24. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    actually thoughtful wrote "Please no! Lose means to reduce in quantity or not know where it is. Loose means not fitting well." Agreed. And in this case the thing that is being reduced in quantity is the energy. Or are you suggesting that energy doesn't fit well in the atmosphere? In the context: "More of the GH gases make it harder for the Earth to loose energy to space" Using "loose" looks terrible from a UK English point of view, but I have seen it misused like that in other places on the net.
  25. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    A lot of conservatives seem to be left wing nuts based on Bast's rant. Why does he see everything in black and white?
  26. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    We must peel back the layers of science, until there is no science left.
  27. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Doug H, quotes like that make me feel I'm teetering on the edge of an endlessly recursive intellectual black-hole! Yep, somewhere there's a platonic, real scientific establishment, who will sweep in and save us from... um, well, the actual scientific establishment... Epistemic Closure achieved, My Leader!
  28. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    Pluvial, There's a lot of interesting regional effects of this sort that people have looked at for the Amazon rainforest, Sahara desert, etc which are embedded features within the larger scale circulation. But it's actually not so trivial to change the fractional area of convection over the tropical ocean, as cloudy regions are coupled to clear sky regions by dynamical heat transports. Indeed, to the extent that the SST threshold for convection changes at a similar rate as the tropical mean SST, one would expect little change in the fractional area of convectively active regions over the ocean, even with an increase in moisture.
  29. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Glen, Really excellent clear informative exhaustive responses! And I agree with you about Mother nature, though I will take a lag if nature will give it to us. I actually would hope for a significant increase in temps in the next few years to get the politics going and THEN a bit of a lag! I imagine that in 10 years we could really mobilize and make huge initial progress of transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 50 to really complete it.
  30. Bert from Eltham at 19:28 PM on 17 February 2012
    DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    "shoud persuade anyone with half a brain" Mission accomplished! Bert
  31. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Woody Ocean Heating along with the secondary heating like the atmosphere - what we call global warming - is caused by changes to the various heat fluxes in the climate system, including DLR Trenberth, Fasullo & Kiehl 2008 estimate absorbed fluxes down to the surface as follows: Solar absorbed by the surface - 161 Watts/M^2, Back Radiation 333 Watts/M^2 This is averaged out over the entire planet, rather than just the oceans. So to your comment: "This ocean heating is all the result of down-welling long wave IR from the extra CO2 in the atmosphere" Not quite true. Rather, the heating of everything, oceans, air etc is driven by changes in the balance of various factors. The previous temperature was based on the previous balance.When the balance changes, the temperature changes. However, this varies hugely with latitude. "Do all 1 m2 patches of ocean, at any point on the globe, receive the same amount of down-welling long wave IR radiation? Is it stronger at the tropics than the polar regions? Thanks, in advance, for any answers. " Yes, this stuff varies hugely with latitude. In the Tropics the amount of incoming Solar absorbed is greater than that radiated to space. The difference in energy between the two is moved toward the Poles by the major circulation patterns of the weather systems. So too the amount of downwelling radiation varies with latitude since this is driven by the temperarure profile of the atmosphere which varies with latitude.
  32. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    And as for the Bast lambast, one of the comments posted in response to it says:
    This madness will never stop until these con artists are exposed and suffer the censure of the scientific establishment.
    I couldn't have put it better myself, except that the commenter was not referring to Bast's madness, but the madness of The Worldwide Conspiracy Of Scientists And Everyone Who Doesn't Support The Tea Party, presumably.
  33. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    owl905 I have to disagree. Physically Mother Nature might have given us some wriggle room. By Psychologically she has trumped us. Nothing is going to lull people into a sense, not of complacency, but of lethargy & inertia, more than the 'Nothing to Report Here' meme. If Mother Nature (not wanting to over-anthropomorphise here) wanted us to act on this 'She' would have scared the living bejeesus out of is ages ago.
  34. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    The spooky thing is that some people will still prefer the NIPCC reports over the IPCC, even when their noses are rubbed in the evidence. It is people like those who give Heartland and others a reason to continue spinning, misinforming and weaseling. It makes me sad to be a member of the same species. As Homer Simpson is reputed to have said "Weasel words are what set humans apart from other animals. Except weasels."
  35. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Regarding the so-called faked stragey document, I think the jury is still out. HI has a strong motive for denying the document, and it's the most deniable because it only exists in scanned form. In contrast it's hard to understand what motive the leaker might have for gilding the lily in this way, especially if his/ her main objective was incite IRS scrutiny of HI's charitable status. According to this article, which contains direct quotes from HI's local FBI office, no complaint has been received nor is there any obvious legal basis for an investigation. Heartland Instition raising money off "Denialgate"
  36. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Wow, I think Bast is his own (and Heartland's) worst enemy.
  37. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Ian F: That piece from Bast is amazing. Given the multiple external confirmations of the leaked information and this kind of outburst, who now needs the documents to make a case against Heartland? And to think I'd been rating them as some species of Machiavellian masterminds!
  38. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    This ocean heating is all the result of down-welling long wave IR from the extra CO2 in the atmosphere? Imagine a 1 m2 section of equatorial ocean. What is the ratio between the amount of energy received by this patch from this down-welling long wave IR vs that received from direct sunlight over an average year? Do all 1 m2 patches of ocean, at any point on the globe, receive the same amount of down-welling long wave IR radiation? Is it stronger at the tropics than the polar regions? Thanks, in advance, for any answers.
  39. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Years ago, the pro-pollutionist tactics were already well-established: 1. Nothing is happening. 2. Something is happening, but it's natural. 3. Something unnatural is happening, but it's good. 4. Something bad was happening, but it's stopped. 5. Something bad is happening but it's too expensive to tackle. 6. Something bad could be addressed but ... Nothing is happening. It was the Boston Herald that provided the capstone to the outline:- 'and at every oppportunity the discussion will be pushed back up the ladder'.
  40. DenialGate Highlights Heartland's Selective NIPCC Science
    Joe Bast has written a rebuttal to a New York Times article on deniergate. It contains two paragraphs which show the complete dishonesty and misinformation which is Heartland's stock in trade. The first is about DW's "education" project: "Actually, we’re sharing the real opinions of real scientists on the causes, consequences, and likely future trajectory of climate change, and of economists and other policy experts on what should be done about it, if anything. And of course principals and teachers are biased… most are liberal Democrats, and large majorities of liberal Democrats believe in man-made global warming". The second is a response to the idea that Heartland is "undermining" climate science: "Our mission is not to “undermine climate science,” and even a superficial examination of our corpus of work should persuade anyone with half a brain that we are sincere. Our mission is to report climate science (and economics) more objectively than the environmentalists and left-wing nuts who are using the issue to support their legislative agendas". It seems that the more that Bast and his lackeys are blasting the media and others for exposing the misinformation put out by Heartland the worse it gets for Heartland. No wonder the donors what to remain anonymous.
  41. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Glenn @ 17 "changes in ocean circulation might buy us time." It's already bought us time. "it can also provide a pretext for slowing action to reduce CO2 emissions" What 'slowing action'?? The global response to GHG-pollution is virtually dead. It's full-bore with the fossil fuels. 20 years after the danger was known, the response is on whimper. "is mass, violent population decline." Scare someone else with the Malthusian collapse - the inheritance will be Garbage Dump Earth. "Mother Nature really hasn't done us any favours in the last decade." Yes, it certainly has. And the reaction shouldn't be denial, it should be gratitude for the wiggle room - because so far that slowdown is the only activity on the road that hasn't been pedal-to-the-metal.
  42. Tropical Thermostats and Global Warming
    If the dry regions act like radiators, what would happen if the deserts were made cloudy somehow? For exaple, as agriculture in the desert regions increases what effect does that have on global temperature. Any ideas on where to get such arguments?
  43. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    owl905 Yes, changes in ocean circulation might buy us time. However there is enough uncertainty around how circulation patterns might change in future that we can't count on that. So maybe it buys us time for adaptation. If adaptation is going to be enough, ultimately. Unfortunately it can also provide a pretext for slowing action to reduce CO2 emissions, leaving us more dependent on adaptation down the track. Personal view is that adaptation can only achieve adequate results if we are on a low warming trajectory. If we continue on the current high warming trajectory then the primary adaptation strategy we will use, willingly or otherwise, is mass, violent population decline. And no adaptation strategy will slow the impacts of Ocean Acidification as CO2 climbs. Personally I hope that the model results reported by Meehl are right and that this Hiatus ends soon. Only when we see more serious warming will the dam of Denial break. Humanity can alter our energy systems rapidly if we are sufficiently motivated. But that motivation is esentially an emergency war-time like mobilisation. We won't do that if most people can treat AGW as a problem to worry about later. Mother Nature really hasn't done us any favours in the last decade.
  44. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    I am staying completely out of any Trans-Atlantic Grammatical Wars, to bloody for this delicate soul. Let me know which you want and I will change it. Other changes fixed
  45. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    tonydunc "couldn't it be argued that the huge time lag in deep ocean cycling could be responsible for temperature changes from decades or centuries ago?" Yes it could certainly be argued that if the total heat of the entire system wasn't rising. In a sense that is the basis of the whole 'we are recovering from the Little Ice Age' meme. If the atmosphere had cooled during the little Ice Age then the return of heat from the oceans would then explain surface warming. But the total system heat would not be increasing. And with the huge difference in heat capacity between the atmosphere and the oceans, it is hard to understand why such a 'recovery' is so slow. The extra heat that has shown up in the 0-2000 metre data in about 1/2 a decade is enough to warm the entire atmosphere by about 2 Deg C every year. "EG. arguing that ocean rifts are not adequately studied to determine Anthropocentric CO2 emissions. And I forget the actual argument, but something about how the CO13 to CO14 ratio is no proof of anthropocentric CO2 increase." There are two different arguments here. One suggests extra heat coming from ocean rifts etc. However total heat from within the Earth is only about 0.1 Watts/M^2 compared to the Forcing from a doubling of CO2 of 3.7 Watts/M^2. And it is incredibly hard to come up with a geological reason why the flux of geothermal heat would fluctuate on anything but geological time scales. The other half of this is subsea sources of CO2, perhaps suggesting the rise in CO2 isn't due to us. There are a number of arguments against this. 1st. The C12/C13 argument is very simple. Natural carbon ratios are 99% C12/1% C13. The only places where this isn't true is anything derived from plants - since the photosynthesis mechanism used by most plants preferentially absorbs C12, anything plant derived is C13 depleted. So, Plants, Soils, Animals, and Fossil Fuels. So if the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is coming from subsea vents, it wouldn't be C13 depleted. So it wouldn't change CC12/C13 ratios in the atmosphere in the ways we have observed. 2nd, the subsea vent argument has to explain where the CO2 humanity has emitted has gone. And if our CO2 can be totally absorbed into 'something' why isn't the CO2 being similarly absorbed. The only plausible answer to that is that CO2 from the sea floor massively exceeds humanities cumulative emissions. 3rd. If so much is being released on the sea floor, how does it reach the surface? If it rises to the surface as bubbles, where is all this 'schwepervesence', where are the bubbles that no sailor has ever reported. If it is dissolving in the ocean then it must reach the surface via the ocean overturning circulation, which requires centuries. So what are the odds that centuries ago, before the start of the Industrial Revolution, venting on the sea floor started releasing huge amounts of CO2 that would arrive at the surface just in time to look like it was our emissions while our emissions have mysteriously vanished. And if it were dissolving down there in such quantities the Carbonate Chemistry & Ph of the deep waters would show characteristics of that. And they don't. "SO how much do we know about heat exchange for the entire oceans? Or do we not need to know that because we can determine the rate of change, and that is enough?" We don't know everything about heat exchange in the ocean, but we know a lot. We know how fast heat diffuses in still water. We have mapped the major ocean currents, including their speed and the volumes of water moving, we have mapped salinity distributions. And we have the ability to measure temperatures, and thus heat content in detail for half the oceans volume and to a much lower resolution for the other half. As for what we need to know to know enough. Being able to measure heat content for the top half of the ocean and estimate whether the lower half s changing much is enough to do an energy balance. If the rate of total heat rise is continuing much as we expect we have a pretty good handle on what is happening. But more detailed studies such as Meehl help us understand more about the mechanisms. Understanding Ocean warming is important to our projections of future warming. Less about how much the whole system will warm eventually, but more about the journey to that final state. Will it be a steady rise in surface temps, or alternating periods of high warming and hiatus. This all depends on how the oceans flip-flop about a little. But this doesn't effect much what the final result will be.
  46. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Eric, @207, thanks for the quick response confirming my worst fears. Mr. Morano certainly has dirt on his hands. It makes the H.I. hand-wringing about left-wing nutters even more hypocritical, if that were possible. Let's all treat the Strategy document as tainted and just use the legitimate documents as a stick to beat them with. Do I have any qualms about using information that may have been dishonestly acquired? Yes, to exactly the same extent that H.I. have qualms about misrepresenting the stolen UEA emails, conspiring to distort the teaching of science in schools, or supporting intemperate activists such as Mr. Morano.
  47. NASA scientists expect more rapid global warming in the very near future (part 2)
    Same story, this time from Lawrence Livermore Labs: Extreme summer temperatures occur more frequently ... previously rare high summertime (June, July and August) temperatures are already occurring more frequently in some regions of the 48 contiguous United States. ... What was historically a one in 20-year occurrence will occur with at least a 70 percent chance every year. This work shows an example of how climate change can affect weather extremes, as well as averages. --emphasis added Appears in Climatic Change.
  48. Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    The Oceans are a complex mix of forces. If we were dealing with a simple body of water heated from above convection would tend to push heat towards the surface but conduction, a much smaller factor would tend to push heat down. Then add that the oceans are salty and very deep and you can have salinity effects that counter the convection. During the early 1980's I was involved in a project devloping Solar Ponds. Large deep pools of water that were heavily salted to produce stratified layers of differing density that could counter the circulation due to thermal buoyancy. The result was a pool that reached 80-90C at the bottom from solar energy from above - we had to put up safety fencing and warning signs. The project failed because we couldn't maintain the stability of the salinity gradient. But it showed clearly how salinity/density effects can counter thermal convective forces. Then in the oceans add Coriolis Forces, the pumping effect of the Thermo-Haline circulation that drives the main ocean surface and bottom currents, and the shape of the sea floor and continents and you have a very complex system fo circulation patterns, that are certainly strong enough to overwhelm simple thermal convection towards the surface in some regions of the ocean, as shown in Meehl et al. But this isn't uniform across the oceans. In other regions where currents & gyres don't operate, the ocean can be strongly stratified. The most dramatic demonstration of this was during the 1950's, during the era of atomic testing. The USA tested a 'Depth Bomb', a nuclear Depth Charge - One explosion, guaranteed destruction of an enemy submarine. Several months after the test a research vessel returned to the area and took water samples, exploring how far the blast products had spread. They had horizontally over around 100 sq Kilometers. But the real surprise was vertical spread - to the best estimates they could make with the instruments they had, the blast products had only spread vertically in a laey 1 metre thick! After an nuclear blast, for stratification to re-establish so strongly shows how strong the forces driving vertical stratification are in the absence of other forces. What all this tells us is that transfer of anything in the oceans - heat, dissolved gases etc is a complex mixture major flows alongs the oceans 'highways', and virtually no flow outside the 'highways'. If the highways change their behaviour then significant changes in heat storage patterns are entirely possible. And this is why the simple argument often used by skeptics that 'heated water rises!' is wrong.
  49. Denialgate - Internal Heartland Documents Expose Climate Denial Funding Network
    Sphaerica @208, in Australia, and I presume in the US, knowingly making false statements with the purpose of obtaining money is fraud, and a criminal offense. Joseph Bast has purportedly written to his donors:
    "We have reported the identity theft and computer fraud to the police and to the FBI. We are asking the bloggers and reporters to immediately remove these documents and all statements about them from the blogs, Web sites, and publications, and to publish retractions. But we aren't holding our breath. The individuals who have commented so far on these documents did not wait for Heartland to confirm or deny the authenticity of the documents. We believe their actions constitute civil and possibly criminal offenses for which we can pursue charges and collect payment for damages, including damages to our reputation. Litigation is expensive, and it surely wasn't in our budget for 2012. But we don¹t think the criminals who did this ought to be allowed to skate away without penalty. We are creating a legal defense fund to support litigation, starting immediately, to demand that false and defamatory material be removed from blogs and Web sites and publications, and that the true criminals in this case be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Can you make a charitable contribution to our legal defense fund? You would be helping us defend ourselves against a cowardly and criminal attack. You would also help us take down a notch some of the left-wing activists and their friends who so plainly crossed the line this time."
    That is clearly a request for money, and the basis of that request includes the claim that he has taken the matter to police and FBI. If he has in fact not taken the matter to police and FBI, then a conviction for fraud will be hard to avoid. Assuming that he is not terminally stupid, it therefore, follows that Bast has indeed reported an incident of alleged "identity theft and computer fraud" to police and the FBI. In Australia,and presumably in the US, knowingly and falsely alleging a crime to police where none has been committed is also a criminal offense. Therefore again, excluding terminal stupidity, that indicates that Bast has not only reported an incident of alleged "identity theft and computer fraud" to police and the FBI, but he believes that identity theft and computer fraud to have occurred. Given that he believes that and is in a reasonable position to know (as we are not), the presumption must be that that is what occurred. Now it may be that Bast is wrong. For example, it may be that the person Bast sort information on in the issue is in fact the the person who sent the documents to desmogblog as an act of whistle blowing, and have falsely represented the case in order to cover their tracks. But that is a big assumption to make on a "maybe", and should not be the basis of our actions. What is more, if that is the case, it will undoubtedly emerge as the result of the police and/or FBI investigation. In that case we can revise our opinions when that emerges. In the meantime we lose nothing by assuming that the documents (excluding the 990 form) where obtained by criminal activity, and that the strategy document is a fraud.
  50. actually thoughtful at 14:15 PM on 17 February 2012
    Breaking News…The Earth Is Warming…Still!
    Owl905 - Please no! Lose means to reduce in quantity or not know where it is. Loose means not fitting well. The loose use of lose should not be codified - it should be banned.

Prev  1265  1266  1267  1268  1269  1270  1271  1272  1273  1274  1275  1276  1277  1278  1279  1280  Next


The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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