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  1446  1447  1448  1449  1450  1451  1452  1453  1454  1455  1456  1457  1458  1459  1460  1461  Next

Comments 72651 to 72700:

  1. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 00:27 AM on 13 October 2011
    The Earth continues to build up heat
    “The Earth continues to build up heat [?]” Well, it is difficult not be skeptical (in this question) if you look for example at the figure and reads the comments: “The linear trend of the observations is approximately 7% of the trend projected by the model mean of the GISS Model-E.” In work Church et al., 2011. this sentence: “Ocean warming (90% of the total of the Earth's energy increase) continues through to the end of the record, in agreement with continued greenhouse gas forcing.” if we compare “it” whit a first sentence - comments above, it “receives” a slightly different meaning ...
    Response:

    [DB] Per your link, 0-700 meters is not the whole ocean, and is thus not considered global.

    Per the third sentence of the OP above:

    This new research combines measurements of ocean heat, land and atmosphere warming and ice melting to find that our climate system continued to accumulate heat through to 2008.

    Emphasis added for clarity.

  2. Understanding climate denial
    For the casual reader... Please, by all means, read through elsa's posts, and the responses. If you want a textbook case of denial, as evidenced by... 1) An absurd level of confidence and arrogance in a complete misunderstanding of the science. 2) An unwillingness to listen. 3) An unwillingness to follow informative links to learn. 4) The constant repetition of falsehoods, in the face of all evidence. 5) An almost fanatical faith in her position. 6) A complete lack of links and citations : everything is categorically and definitively stated, yet this truth is expected to be taken at face value simply because she says so. 7) The aggressive and rather comically repeated use (in pretty much every single post) of a term ("warmist") that she hopes will push people's buttons, even though no one actually cares. ... and so much more. Elsa provides you with an insight into exactly how emotionally wedded and intellectually detached a denier can become. From the original post:
    The most common response was attitude bolstering. This involves bringing to mind arguments that support pre-existing views while denying any counter evidence. The process is reflexive and almost sub-conscious.
  3. The Earth continues to build up heat
    Church's et al paper is a nice summary of a number of hydrological/oceanographic parameters, and ones that toll a grim knell. Now that attention has been drawn to it on Skeptical Science, I expect that there will soon be a glut of denialist 'rebuttals' attempting to discredit the numbers...
  4. Understanding climate denial
    elsa#238: "I think I have studied this subject in some detail" You have yet to provide a single bit of evidence for any of your 'positions.' If you have studied, show what you have studied. If you have some expertise, show it. Until such time as you can prove that you know what you're talking about, your comments here are of neither substance nor interest. Of opinions, we have plenty. Of noise, there is no shortage.
  5. Dikran Marsupial at 23:41 PM on 12 October 2011
    Understanding climate denial
    elsa wrote: "I think the more normal confidence limit is 95% which I guess the warmist view has been unable to meet." The comment to which you were referring described a likelihood, not a hypothesis test, they are not the same thing. The initial comment was analogeous to the statement "it is highly likely that if I roll a ten sided die I will get a score less than two". Obviously there is no hypothesis test implied in that statement either. BTW, the 95% significance level has no statistical basis whatsoever, and is merely a (rather lazy) tradition in the sciences. Fisher, one of the fathers of statistical hypothesis testing said that the significance level should depend on the nature of the problem. BTW2, most people don't understand hypothesis testing anyway, failing to reach the significance level does not mean that the alternative hypothesis is false, it just means that the available evidence does not allow us to rule out the possibility that the null hypothesis is true. The idea that you shouldn't claim a hypothesis is likely to be true unless you are able to reject the null hypothesis is a safety measure to help prevent people overclaiming on their results, but it has no real rational basis.
  6. Understanding climate denial
    elsa,
    There is no equation linking CO2 and temperature given to us from physics that we can test. That is why we have to do it the other way round. We assume that there is a link (and incidentally I would not question that there is, it's just that we do not know what it is; there is no "hard physics" contrary to what someone put to me earlier) and then build models that fit the data to the theory.
    Please listen carefully. The above statement of yours is 100% wrong. It is full of false statements. You need to study and learn that your entire position is founded upon a lie. Since you clearly haven't studied the actual science I can only assume that you "learned" this tripe from disinformation sites like appinsys, WUWT and other places. Whatever the source, your information is wrong. You have an abysmal understanding of the science. Physics predicts that CO2 will cause temperatures to rise. This was established more than 100 years ago. That temperatures really are rising is not a mere coincidence. Models do not fit the data to the theory. They emulate the physics, and the end result is a system that looks and acts just like the earth's climate, and who's results parallel what we observe in real life. Stop spreading falsehoods. And stop believing them yourself. The topic of this post is understanding climate denial. Have you read it? Do you read anything? You need to stop ranting, open your eyes and learn... not from disinformation sites that tell you what you want to hear, but rather from actual scientific sites where you learn actual science. Everything you think you know is wrong. You need to stop ranting and lecturing and start learning.
  7. Understanding climate denial
    elsa wrote : "JMurphy I guess we can take it that you accept the 95% has not been met so a lower standard needed to be adopted; I will leave it to you to determine the definition of warmist, a term which is at least more attractive than "denier" even if it is one that you dislike or cannot understand." I don't know what more anyone can do to show you where you are going wrong with the first part of your statement, so I will just refer you back to my original response to you, where anyone who is actually interested can see the difference between the use of 'very likely' and 'statistically significant', and when such terms can be used. You also don't seem to realise that not using the 95% confidence level doesn't mean that it could be used. Please look at the links I provided, to find out more. As for the definition of "warmist" - you are the one using it, so I presumed that you would have some idea as to what it means : at least to you. If you don't, fair enough : at least I know. And how can I dislike it if I don't know what it means ?!
  8. Understanding climate denial
    Elsa, There has been an increase in Greenhouse gases which is quit capable of explaining the warming over the past fifty years. There has not been the sort of solar variation or change in volcanism or orbital and rotational parameters that could give rise to that variation in that time. Greenhouse gases are the only thing known to have changed in a way that could have caused the observed effects. Further the pattern in space and time of temperature changes it that expected from greenhouse gas increases not that from solar variation. These are the reasons why we know it was us. If you claim it was not then you have to come up with an alternative explanation and explain why it is mimicking the behaviour of a greenhouse gas increase.
  9. Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    Tom Curtis: Have you seen this new exposed land, it is not arable and will not be for centuries. #28 Good questions and I only have to time to briefly address #3. The key glaciers with large floating tongues, not really considered ice shelves, are Petermann, Zacharaiae and Nioghalvfjerdsbræ (79) and Storstrommen. As Petermann the thinnest has shown these large floating sections are not that stable. All of these are still outlet glaciers feeding into a fjord and the loss of the floating ice results from thinning and will in turn lead to some acceleration. Ryder Glacier is another example but this glacier is small with respect to the others. Zacharaieis the most important because it taps into the heart of the ice sheet. Note figure 7 in that link.
  10. Hyperactive Hydrologist at 22:56 PM on 12 October 2011
    Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    I have few questions: 1) What is the error associated with the GRACE measurements of Greenland? 2) How much will the central region of the ice cap be affected by accelerating glaciers around the fringes of Greenland? 3) How stable are the ice shelves in northern and eastern Greenland and how soon can we expect to see acceleration of glaciers in these regions? 4) What will happen once the glaciers retreat from the coast and the process of ocean carving ceases? Apologies for all the questions.
  11. Understanding climate denial
    DB] "It's just that their proposition is untestable and their claims are in some cases outrageous and not backed by anything much at all." If you have an actual example to cite, please do so. In the absence of concrete examples, please refrain from such blandishments. "But I prefer a modest acceptance of our lack of knowledge to a pretence to extensive knowledge that we cannot possibly have." The modest acknowledgement of a lack of understanding on your part does not preclude the existence of greater knowledge on the part of science. I recommend studying more and commenting less. I think I have studied this subject in some detail and I note that you have not commented on my, admittedly short, critique of models as a "proof" of your own particular point of view and the lack of science in it. Nor do you seek to refute my comment on the lack of data sharing by some of the warmist community, which is the only method by which their views could be properly peer reviewed and a real consensus arrived at. JMurphy I guess we can take it that you accept the 95% has not been met so a lower standard needed to be adopted; I will leave it to you to determine the definition of warmist, a term which is at least more attractive than "denier" even if it is one that you dislike or cannot understand.
    Response:

    [DB] "I note that you have not commented on my, admittedly short, critique of models as a "proof" of your own particular point of view and the lack of science in it."

    That would be because models have far more appropriate threads than this one, so are OT here.  And your "critique" lacks bones as well as meat.  If you wish to focus on models, take that portion of your commentary to one of those threads (Search function).

    "Nor do you seek to refute my comment on the lack of data sharing by some of the warmist community, which is the only method by which their views could be properly peer reviewed and a real consensus arrived at."

    Again, OT here because there are many threads dealing with this, old, issue.  Again, take it there.

    And please note that block quoting, which you do, is considered poor form.  Reserve quoting for a point-by-point dealing with things; otherwise, just referring to the particular comment with a link will do.

  12. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    Perhaps this came up before, but I think something useful for this type of analysis would be to estimate uncertainties in each term. Also, more useful from a policy perspective would be to estimate forcing from categories of human activity, such as fossil fuel production/use, forest clearing, etc.
  13. Understanding climate denial
    elsa#234: "My position is that we do not really know whether or not CO2/humanity is responsible for such warming as has taken place." Perhaps it is time you substantiated your position, for such is the expected behavior at SkS. Rather than declare, support. On what evidence have you formed these positions? References to literature? Peer-reviewed research? Analytic work? Because the critical question really is not over your opinion, but over what facts you have chosen to form your opinion.
  14. Sea level fell in 2010
    This also comes from the same source. Putting the recent drop in the longer term context makes the "pothole" look relatively smaller, and well within the longer trend. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/revisiting-earths-sea-level-and-energy-budgets-1961-2008
  15. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    Jonathon: "What I found surprising was the exclusion of albedo and aerosol contributions." I think you may have misunderstood the discussion. Aerosols (e.g. black carbon) are included. What is in dispute are additional 'knock on' "indirect" and "semi-direct" effects (basically hypotheses that aerosols impact clouds and precipitation) from aerosols. Dr. Pielke apparently believes these are significant while other research suggests they are negligible. Similarly for albedo. No one has suggested that it isn't a significant factor. Only that albedo changes due to ice loss are a feedback and thus not relevant to this discussion of human forcing effects. I believe Dr. Pielke's position is that human land use changes have resulted in a significant albedo shift, but again that is a dispute over a particular subset rather than the entire topic of 'albedo'.
  16. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    It appears that too many people are getting hung up on the exact figure that CO2 is contributing to the warming. Whether CO2 has contributed 30% or 50% to the observed warming is helpful in making future projections, but is not critical. Considering the uncertainties involved in all the measurements, determining the contribution to within 20% would be amazing. What I found surprising was the exclusion of albedo and aerosol contributions. Do people here really believe that they are irrelevant?
  17. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    I have read the 2009 EOS article. Given what it contains, the question which should be asked of Pielke Sr's is not what % of human-caused forcing from CO2 but what % of human-caused forcing from all greenhouse gases. EOS 2009 presents three “mutually exclusive” hypotheses (1) Human influence on climate is minimal, (2a) Alongside important natural variation, human influence on climate is significant due to a diverse range of first order climate forcings which includes CO2, (2b) Alongside important natural variation, human influence on climate is significant dominantly due to GHGs, the most important being CO2. Two of these hypotheses are then dismissed. “We suggest that the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature (e.g., as summarised by National Research Council (NRC) [2005]) is predominantly in support of hypothesis 2a, in that a diverse range of first-order human climate forcings have been identified.” These non-GHG forcings are “...spacially hetrogeneous and include...” aerosols on clouds, aerosol deposition, reactive nitrogen & changing land use. Their effects are estimated to be multi-decadal and longer. If this diverse range of non-GHG forcings are a significant influence on climate, how big is that significance in comparison with human GHG forcing? Pielke Sr appears to be presenting mankind with an additional crisis caused by non-GHG forcings on top of that caused predominantly by GHG emissions stating “global climate models do not accurately simulate (or even include) several of these first-order human climate forcings.” If EOS 2009 is to be taken seriously, the first step must be to quantify the “significance” of these non-GHG forcings.
  18. Understanding climate denial
    elsa, it is unfortunately obvious (but, perhaps, not to you yourself) that you are posting about things about which you appear to have very little detailed knowledge. A previous response of yours (I think the more normal confidence limit is 95% which I guess the warmist view has been unable to meet) highlights that very well, and shows that you need to read more on this site : "Very Likely" - See Box TS1 in the last IPCC Report - "> 90% probability" (Working Group 1 of which you would be well-advised to actually read). Confidence Intervals - In common usage, a claim to 95% confidence in something is normally taken as indicating virtual certainty. You are not doing yourself any favours by constantly misrepresenting/misusing scientific terms or ideas, and I would still advise you to also read Spencer Weart's History of Global Warming, as has been suggested to you many times already. Is there any reason why you are ignoring what others are suggesting you look at ? And do you have a definition for "warmist" (even if it's just one you have made up for your own benefit), so we can see who or what it is you are actually arguing against.
  19. Understanding climate denial
    Skywatcher, Diversion, a great tactic. Especially when you attempt to transpose onto someone else what you in fact are doing yourself. Focusing on something new to avoid the original discussion, then claim that it was your opponent, not you, who changed the subject. Very nice, but flawed. I guess we will just have to disagree on the definition of consensus. If you think that consensus applies to a wide range, so be it. I prefer to think of consensus as being a general belief in a narrow outcome. Who is the one actually playing word games with Webster here? Your attention to catastrophic is, in your own words, a strawman.
  20. Understanding climate denial
    While that may be true in many cases it is clearly not the situation in all cases and it is really a very arrogant position to take." For someone so unacquainted with the field, you continually make similar statements. I don't think I have ever pronounced as to why warmists hold the views that they do. If I were to hazard some guesses I would say (1) that people can get carried away with maths. As Lovelock has put it "We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they're not complete models. They're based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don't take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don't see how they can accurately predict the climate." and (2) that humans seems to have a tendency to prefer an invalid or untestable explanation to no explanation at all (think of the 14th century doctors). However I would also say that for the most part they are concerned people of good intent and actually I can see that there could well be truth in what they say. It's just that their proposition is untestable and their claims are in some cases outrageous and not backed by anything much at all. My position is that we do not really know whether or not CO2/humanity is responsible for such warming as has taken place. I fully admit that I do not have a better explanation and I am prepared to face the fact that mankind does not have a detailed knowledge of what drives the climate. But I prefer a modest acceptance of our lack of knowledge to a pretence to extensive knowledge that we cannot possibly have.
    Response:

    [DB] "It's just that their proposition is untestable and their claims are in some cases outrageous and not backed by anything much at all."

    If you have an actual example to cite, please do so.  In the absence of concrete examples, please refrain from such blandishments.

    "But I prefer a modest acceptance of our lack of knowledge to a pretence to extensive knowledge that we cannot possibly have."

    The modest acknowledgement of a lack of understanding on your part does not preclude the existence of greater knowledge on the part of science.

    I recommend studying more and commenting less.

  21. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    MMM - Society and the environment are influenced by regional and local issues, including climate. The use of a global average is of much less value to determine risks. In terms of how long each forcing affects these spatial scales land use/land cover change, nitrogen deposition, black carbon deposition, and mineral dust deposition are examples of four other human climate forcings with long residence times in the climate system.
  22. Understanding climate denial
    "This is in the scienctific sense. In this case, it means a greater than 90% likelihood." I think the more normal confidence limit is 95% which I guess the warmist view has been unable to meet.
  23. Understanding climate denial
    I would like to add a short comment on the subject of consensus and peer review. I think a meaningful consensus can only be arrived at after debate and discussion and peer review, not by those that agree with you but rather those that do not. A review of the reasons for the existence of god by ten thousand clergymen is hardly likely to lead to pick up a fault in the logic. Here there has been a remarkable unwillingness on the part of warmist scientists such as Phil Jones to subject their work to review by anyone who disagrees with them, while those that do agree are shown the numbers. It is outrageous that he only releases data to his opponents when forced to do so by FOI Act requests. This sort of attitude is another reason why denialism will continue for if the warmists are so sure of their position it is impossible to understand their need for secrecy.
    Response:

    [DB] "It is outrageous that he only releases data to his opponents when forced to do so by FOI Act requests."

    Perhaps you are unaware that all of the data is available for download. 

    Given that the data is freely available, perhaps you'll then consider it outrageous that those proclaiming to be skeptics have done little with it other than to confirm the "hockey stick" is replicable using as little as 10% of the data because that is what the data show: a hockey-stick-like rise in global temps.  Yet the anti-science drum beat continues.

  24. Understanding climate denial
    "Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities." This is a quite carefully worded statement. I don't think I have questioned that the world is a bit warmer today than say 100 years ago. That is a measurable proposition and while I have seen questioning of the extent of the warming I don't really think anyone denies it. What is interesting is the second part because the certainty is removed from it; it says only that the warming is likely due to human activities. That is rather in contrast to this article and much of the thrust of those who have disagreed with me here. Both seem to take it as proven that human activity has brought about the warming and that anyone who disagrees is either ill informed, stupid or deluded. While that may be true in many cases it is clearly not the situation in all cases and it is really a very arrogant position to take.
    Response:

    [DB] "What is interesting is the second part because the certainty is removed from it; it says only that the warming is likely due to human activities."

    This is in the scienctific sense.  In this case, it means a greater than 90% likelihood.

    "While that may be true in many cases it is clearly not the situation in all cases and it is really a very arrogant position to take."

    For someone so unacquainted with the field, you continually make similar statements.

  25. Understanding climate denial
    Sphaerica You say I am wrong so tell us what the information is that we have been given by physics. We have no starting point. There is no equation linking CO2 and temperature given to us from physics that we can test. That is why we have to do it the other way round. We assume that there is a link (and incidentally I would not question that there is, it's just that we do not know what it is; there is no "hard physics" contrary to what someone put to me earlier) and then build models that fit the data to the theory. But this is just a circular argument. Of course the data will fit because we made it do so, it does not test the theory at all. Then we come across awkward patches of time when the temperature falls in the face of rising CO2 concentrations. The models get round this by adding in other variables. But in doing this the models are not testing the CO2 theory they are assuming it is correct and giving it a let out. Here any pretence to science really disappears. If we have a theory that fits the facts whatever happens (if temperature goes down it is true just as it must be when the temperature goes up) then we have a theory that is completely beyond testing. That is one of the reasons why denialism will continue and be able to fight back.
  26. Dikran Marsupial at 18:01 PM on 12 October 2011
    It's cooling
    NETDR writes: "I contend that we are at the start of a 20 to 30 year cooling cycle" I very much hope you are right; sadly your reasoning is very shaky. Looking at time series data and detecting a pattern does not mean that the pattern inquestion has any physical basis, but without a physical basis there is no good reason to think that the pattern will continue intop the future. In the case of the cycles linked to PDO, the problem is that there have been changes in other forcings, so how can you tell that the cycle is real rather than being the result of changes in other forcings that have coincided to form what appears to be a cycle and a bit of an oscillation? You can't tell by statistical means which is which (as correllation does not imply cuasation), you can only tell the difference via physics. So, has anyone produced a physical model that reproduces the observed cycle as a result of PDO, rather than as a result of known changes in the other forcings, such as solr forcing? I think you will find the answer to that question is "no", simply becuase once you include physics into the argument it quickly becomes apparent that PDO can have caused little of the observed variation.
  27. Australia’s contribution matters: why we can’t ignore our climate responsibilities
    Just for the record,the "Carbon Tax" bill was passed today through Australia's federal House of Representatives. With no chance of the legislation being blocked in the senate, we'll have a carbon trading scheme in place on July 1 2012. Despite claims by the leader of the opposition to repeal the legislation should he win government at the next election in 2013, he will not have the numbers in the senate to make good such a promise. The long and the short of it is, Australia has at least 4 years to get accustomed to, and to refine, a carbon trading scheme.
  28. Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    In my rush to comment, I made a mistake at 24. Hansen and Sato predict doubling of GIS ice loss per decade which, by 2050 would result in cumulative loss of 48,000 gigatonnes with annual loss increasing to 3,200 gigatonnes per annum. Tom Curtis - I think that is right, mildly beneficial until the last 20 years of this century when RSL as much as ice loss seems likely to cause problems. Though I hear from Greenlanders in the far north west that they are already being caused problems by lack of sea ice inhibiting travel and hunting.
  29. Sea level fell in 2010
    Thanks Papy, demonstrates the relationship nicely.
  30. Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    Thanks Mauri.
  31. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    "and the fact that CO2 is not even the large majority of the positive radiative forcings underscores this need. " But CO2 _is_ the single largest contributor. Moreover, emissions of CO2 lead to changes in atmospheric concentrations that can last 100s or 1000s of years... many of the other forcings are much more transient (eg, CH4, O3, BC, contrails, etc.). So, while I agree that these other forcings are important, and we certainly shouldn't ignore them, CO2 is clearly, at the global scale, the primary contributor to long-term climate change. If, in the next half century, human society realizes that global climate change is a problem, it will be possible at that point to reduce CH4, BC, and O3 concentrations fairly quickly. All the CO2 we've emitted between now and then, though, will be pretty much permanently in the carbon cycle until we figure out air capture... I'm also unconvinced that the IPCC hasn't adequately addressed most of these other contributors. I'd certainly admit that the IPCC could do a better job on the causes of weather events, but that is a hard problem, and they are building up to it (In my opinion, interesting recent papers have included interactions of large scale weather with sea ice retreat, solar fluctuations, and historical attribution of southwestern megadroughts to ocean cycles and other factors). But they _do_ make their best attempt at characterizing global forcing from as many sources as possible, and between AR4 and AR5 are probably putting a lot of effort into getting better numbers for the most uncertain of these (such as BC and other aerosols).
  32. SkS Weekly Digest #19
    Bern & panzerboy: There is a technical glitch embedded in the toon, but I do not know how to fix it. Perhaps one of my tech savy colleagues will be able to do so. I use Internet Explorer and I do not see a toon on either the home page or on this version.
    Moderator Response: [DB] It's there in Firefox 7 but not in IE 8.
  33. It's cooling
    NETDR - right. And if climate science turns about to be correct (ie it keeps warming as predicted), will you graciously return here to agree and then move on to work for GHG reduction? Or it will it be try to find another excuse for inaction?
  34. Pielke Sr. and SkS Warming Estimates
    Rob Honeycutt - You wrote that people will say it's only 28% of the forcing" so they will translate "Dr Pielke says we don't need to worry about CO2." I do not know how many times I can state it, but I certainly agree that added CO2 is a first order climate forcing (with the biogeochemiccal effect being the larger issue, in my view), and have said so repeatedly in my weblog posts and in my papers. I support my son's approach, as presented in his book "The Climate Fix" as the way forward to promote limiting the increase. However, all of the first order climate forcings are important (the global average negative radiative forcings, the regional heterogeneous radiative forcings, and the "non-radiative" climate forcings). In my view, the IPCC has failed to adequately consider these other human climate forcings and the fact that CO2 is not even the large majority of the positive radiative forcings underscores this need. Most, if not all, of these other climate forcings will persist at some level for the foreseeable future and, in terms of how they affect atmospheric circulations, could be much more important than the effects on weather patterns from the radiative effect of added CO2. This is the perspective that we presented in the 2009 EOS article and in the 2005 NRC report. The precise fractional value with respect to preindustrial and 2011, however, is not an important issue. In the biogeochemical perspective, it is the atmospheric concentration that matters, and it is continuing to increase.
  35. Models are unreliable
    It also looks like your friend is confusing physical models (used by climate scientists) with statistical models. However, for a purely phenomenological approach, then perhaps he should look at Benestad and Schmidt
  36. Understanding climate denial
    well said Composer99 - we have an example of word games with Jonathon here. I was refuting his suggestion (in #214) that a large range of values does not equal consensus, Jonathon comes back (in #226) with "ah, but it might not be catastrophic", reframing the question and trying to divert attention from the incorrectness of his original fallacy. Jonathon, whether or not it's catastrophic is irrelevant in this context. The point is that, either when heading towards the cliff face, or being on whatever floor in a burning building, there would be a clear consensus that bad things will happen if no action is taken. Consensus can exist with a large range of possible outcome values, you were disputing that in #214. I showed your dispute to be wrong, so you changed the subject. Another view into the world of denial? A couple of decades ago we were on the ground floor with an easy exit, now we are well on the way to the second floor, heading up. Nearly everyone's saying the building's on fire. Do you believe the one crank saying all the smoke is an illusion?
  37. Understanding climate denial
    Jonathon - "If you were trapped in a burning building and had to jump, would it matter if you were on the 1st of 5th floor?" To quote Herman Daly: "But as long as we focus on measuring these inherently uncertain empirical consequences, rather than on the certain first principles that cause them, we will overwhelm the consensus to “do something now” with ditherings about what we might someday consider doing if ever the evidence is sufficiently compelling. I am afraid that once the evidence is really compelling then our response will also be compelled, and policy choice will be irrelevant. To make the point more simply, if you jump out of an airplane you need a crude parachute more than an accurate altimeter." (emphasis added) If, given the vast quantities of evidence available, you feel that we are not 'falling' at some rate, not suffering a changing climate with consequences to ourselves due to our actions, then you are in denial. Which is the topic of the original post of this thread.
  38. Understanding climate denial
    Mark Chu-Caroll over at Good Math/Bad Math often points out that the worst kind of math is no math at all: a lot of math/physics cranks play language games when attempting to advance their position or refute whatever mainstream position opposes theirs and then fail to back their claims up with actual calculations, data, or other evidence. I suggest that a lot of climate science denialists are engaged in the same behaviour: playing language games, semantics games, quoting Popper without regard to context or other aspects of scientific thought, and then failing to back it up with actual science. The big difference is that your garden-variety math/physics crank has a lot less company.
  39. Understanding climate denial
    Skywatcher, If you were trapped in a burning building and had to jump, would it matter if you were on the 1st of 5th floor? I think it might. Just because you are not on the ground floor with an easy egress, does not mean that the outcome will be catastrophic.
  40. Review of Rough Winds: Extreme Weather and Climate Change by James Powell
    skywatcher @ 208 Thanks for the link to the Peterson Paper. I am reading it now.
  41. Understanding climate denial
    223, Lloyd, Well said, and far more concise than my rambling. Well done.
  42. Understanding climate denial
    elsa,
    ...it is impossible to prove a theory as right.
    Yes, everyone here knows that very well. It is by itself a meaningless statement. Obviously there are lots of things that science "knows" well enough. You're playing games with words and concepts.
    What I would deny is that we know what it is or can test the hypothesis in any meaningful way.
    Then you have not looked at the breadth and depth of knowledge, understanding and measurements that underpin the science. It is quite vast, and any number of observations support it. None refute it. Your position here is thin, and based only on your own ignorance of the science. You presume a lot, trumpet how silly and wrong everyone else is, and you are wrong in doing so.
    We are not given a link by physics we simply do not know the relationship and if you disagree with that tell us what it is.
    Actually, our understanding of the physics is so strong that you would need to completely revolutionize several main aspects of science for it to be wrong. You'd have to explain how warming could not occur. The physics says that things have to warm, and anything else requires that we very much revise our understanding of basic physics. As far as actually teaching you the physics, in detail, you have a whole lot of learning to do. Ten thousand comments here would not cover it. But I have already directed you to a start, something that I don't think you have begun to look at (given your attitude), and that is to go read Spencer Weart's The Discovery of Global Warming.
    In addition I would say that what you call denialism survives because the warmist view is so often apocalyptic
    I love this sort of argument. You don't like how serious the implications are, so therefore it's not true and not believable.
    ...there are other factors that move sea level apart from temperature
    Of course there are. And we understand a lot of them, and are learning more every day. But there are no major hidden factors that have not been taken into account. It's not magic. See, this is the big problem with your entire post. You put a lot of time into telling everyone else what we don't know, when you have no grasp of what we actually do know. You have already demonstrated that your understanding of the models is wildly inaccurate. You demonstrate here that your understanding of the physics is abysmally thin. Your understanding of the observations and how they relate is equally thin. Elsa, you are lecturing people who understand all of these things. You are defiantly and adamantly telling us what you think you know, which is close to nothing. To you, the science is magic, and so you argue as if you were arguing against magic. Please stop. Please educate yourself. Read Spencer Weart's writings. Start to learn the actual physics. Look through the wealth of information on this site. Stop posting from a position of arrogant and dismissive ignorance, and instead learn what it is that you are completely missing. One last note. Using the term "warmist" makes you look silly and uneducated. I suggest you drop the term. Unlike deniers, I really don't care if you do. You can use silly labels all you want. It says a lot more about you than it does about me.
  43. It's cooling
    Netdr#173: "we are at the start of a 20 to 30 year cooling cycle." Yet just here, you posited that it has failed to warm since 2001. So we are ... 10 years into your 20-30 year cooling? And we just had the hottest year on record. Funny kind of cooling, that.
  44. Understanding climate denial
    Elsa, You have left out other characteristics of scientific theorys, especially parsimony and explanatory power. Occam's Razor is the rule of thumb that has scientists seeking theorys that are no more complicated than is necessary to explain phenomena. You do not introduce new entities or processes to explain phenomena if known entities and processes are sufficient. For example unspecified 'natural cycles' is a non explanation. What natural cycles precisely? If you look at known natural forcings that could potentially cause temperature changes you find that they could not have cause the observed temperature changes over the past fifty years. If you look at greenhouse gas changes you find that they could have. Now there might be unknown natural forces that caused the changes but why appeal to unknowns when knowns will do? And being unknown of course they are untestable. And there is explanatory power. A high greenhouse gas sensitivity explains a lot of phenomena about current and past climate. A low sensitivity struggles to explain near as much. That is part of what I and others were referring to when we talked about consilience.
  45. Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    Agnostic @24, exactly! At current rates of melt the Greenland ice melt is merely interesting, and mildly beneficial to inhabitants of Greenland (who gain more arable land). If the acceleration continues it will become a major cause for concern, though not, I think, catastrophic at any realizable level of ice melt.
  46. Greenland ice loss continues to accelerate
    It seems to me that acceleration in the rate of ice loss from the GIS is doing no more than what Hansen and Sato 2011 predicted - doubling per decade. Trouble is, if it continues doing so, by 2050 the rate of loss will be in the order of 48,000 gigtonnes per annum. Then we shall have something to worry about!
  47. Book review: The Inquisition of Climate Science
    DSL#48: "another look into the minds of US conservatives," Here's yet another revealing look, highlighting some key traits: denial of scientific evidence, use of government to censor science. Rice professor accepts Gulf article's fate
    A Rice University oceanographer said he accepts a decision by the state's environmental agency to kill an article he wrote on sea-level rise in Galveston Bay, ending a standoff over the article's references to rising sea levels and human-caused environmental change. "I'm willing to live with not having it published," John Anderson said Tuesday. "I refuse to have it published with their deletions."

    TCEQ is Texas' environmental quality agency; from their mission statement: "Our goal is clean air, clean water, and the safe management of waste." The agency's director, Texas A&M Biological and Agricultural Engineering Professor Bryan Shaw, was appointed in 2007 by Gov. (and current presidential hopeful) Rick Perry. Dr. Shaw is on record as disagreeing with the unanimous opinions of the TAMU Atmospheric Sciences department (Andy Dessler, John N-G, et al) and supports his Governor's opinions on climate change. Inquisition? Nah, just censorship. But you will recall that the Church banned Copernicus' book before putting Galileo on trial.

  48. Joseph E. Postma and the Greenhouse Effect
    John Nicol @14: 1) Postma made a clear error in the maths, as pointed out by Chris Colose:
    "Postma actually doesn’t get the atmospheric radiative flux right. The emission is not σTa4, it is fσTa4, where f is the atmospheric emissivity/absorptivity (following his notation). The emissivity is a unitless factor between 0 and 1 descrbing how good of an absorber/emitter the object is relative to an ideal body. f = 1 describes a blackbody. By Kirchoff's law, the absorptivity of a layer must be equal to the emissivity (at the same wavelength)[.]"
    You cover for this by saying that the "emissivity and absorptivity are taken to be 1". First, that is not correct, for if the absorptivity was taken to be one there would be no need for a term for the transmitted surface radiation. Second, an emissivity of one is thoroughly unrealistic for the real atmosphere, especially if you have only one layer. 2) More importantly, although you correctly indicate that the atmosphere can be treated as having multiple layers by simple extension of the gray slab model, in point of fact Postma uses only one. Climate models will typically use 18 or more layers, and they do so because one is inadequate as an approximation to the Earth's (or Venusian) atmosphere. Further, climate models (other than LBL models) will also include terms for the transfer of energy due to convection and latent heat. Without those terms, any multilayer model will predict an excessively hot surface (by 10s of degrees). Without including multiple atmospheric layers, convection and latent heat Postma's claim to be presenting the "standard model" is simply false. Rather, he is introducing the introductory model introduced in Climate 101 in one lecture and superceded by the end of it. As Postma's conclusions follow only follow only for this instructional model, and not for the actual models as used by climate scientists, his paper should be regarded in the same light as a paper purporting to disprove quantum mechanics by demonstrating flaws in the Rutherford model of the atom. I will leave readers to draw their own conclusions about rebuttals and credibility.
  49. Sea level fell in 2010
    I didn't see this graph in the discussion, so I submit it because the correlation between Multivariate ENSO Index and detrended-corrected global sea mean level seems eloquent : Source
  50. It's cooling
    DB) Your sudden, laser focus on short, statistically insignificant timescales is rather puzzling, given your earlier comment: ************* Since my point is that the sine wave has turned negative and that we have entered a time of cooling because of more La Nina's than El Nino's the short term cooling is entirely germane. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2005/trend http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml A negative PDO doesn't guarantee all La Nina's it just means the dice are loaded. The El Nino of 2010 caused a blip of warming. Since 2011 is a La Nina year and predictions seem to predict that 2012 will be too. http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/nino34SSTMon.gif It doesn't make much sense to focus on the 1978 to 1998 warming since conditions have changed since then. The sea level has gone down by 1/4 inch in the last year or so as you might expect if it were cooling. [short term] http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ I contend that we are at the start of a 20 to 30 year cooling cycle.

Prev  1446  1447  1448  1449  1450  1451  1452  1453  1454  1455  1456  1457  1458  1459  1460  1461  Next


The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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