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

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Comments 75951 to 76000:

  1. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Eric the Red @35, on the contrary, Jevrejeva et al, 2006 and Church and White 2006 (and 2011) both show that sea level rise as determined by gauges is within the error bars of that determined by satellite altimetry over concurrent periods. What is dissimilar is the current trend and those earlier in the twentieth century, which where lower. You evidently want it to be true that there is a mismatch, but neither you nor Steve Case have given us any reason to believe it.
  2. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    I think there is some circular reasoning here. Whatever model would gave a linear growth in temperature. Correcting those model for anything than actual CO2 curve compare to the real one is not a proof that the original model worked at all. For example, if the original model underestimated the temperature increase by a factor 2 and this could be traced back to a erroneous estimate of one constant, the model was wrong by a factor of two. That's it. Only correcting for CO2 curve make sense because this factor is unrelated to the physics of the model.Correcting for other factor that are directly related to the output of the model is another name for curve fitting, which will always work.
  3. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Ok, Rosco, maybe a different strategy is necessary. I will re-post the contents of the link I gave you here in this comment stream, since you seem unwilling to read anything other than this comment stream. Will that work? In the meantime, radiation is the major energy transfer mechanism on Earth, because without it the Earth would heat just shy of infinitely. Any energy that convection and conduction move is necessarily a subset of energy already moved by radiation. And radiation is the overwhelmingly dominant (99.99%) way that energy leaves the Earth system. And here's a research question: why, over the last 30 years, would the stratosphere show a cooling trend and the troposphere show a warming trend? Can convection and conduction alone explain this phenomenon?
  4. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve Case @33, that is an interesting analogy. However, it is fairly obvious in that analogy that Church and White are the EPA, while you are the back shed mechanic gaping spark plugs with a ball-pein hammer. I wonder why you do not draw the obvious conclusion. Having said that: 1) The GIA may not effect the shape of the curve, but strong changes in the regional balance of your data will. What is more, failure to correct for barymetric pressure may also effect acceleration. Consider, for example, this chart of sea level rises by oceanic basin from Jevrejeva et al, 2006: The different basins to not rise or sink synchronously. The reason for this is that major weather patterns such as ENSO or the NAO shift pressure patterns over large areas of ocean, with a consequent change in sea level as water is pushed from one part of the ocean to another. If your data set shows a regional bias, and this phenomenon is uncorrected, that will result in a significant distortion of the result, a distortion that change the acceleration pattern. 2) The issue is the noise, in that a large part of your failure to reproduce Church and White consists of the fact that you have not successfully excluded noise, and indeed have decreased the signal to noise ratio with your reconstruction technique. 3) It appears you have never worked in a workshop, for if you had you would recognize that if your means of measurement significantly disagree, you have a major problem. We may not expect the micrometer and the steel rule to give us exactly the same measurement, but if they are not identical plus or minus 0.5 mm, then either at least one is faulty, or your measurement technique is error prone. 4) See you are the one who chose to attack the science on this point, it is hypocritical of you to then accuse us of "picking the fly specks out of the pepper". You add to that hypocrisy an egregious error. The current rate of sea level rise is between 2 and 3.2 mm per year, leading to an expected sea level rise of 200 to 320 mm per century if nothing changes. Even as a simple projection you 65mm is an obvious error. Such simple projections, are, however, significant underestimates both because they do not account for additional increases in temperature, nor for glacial melt water, which between them will push sea levels up by between 0.6 and 2 meters by the end of the century. Not the most serious implication of global warming, but not negligible either.
  5. SkS Weekly Digest #13
    I think the problem is that people may be led into thinking that the same license would apply to the toons. SkS might be accused of promoting copyright infringement. It might be a grey area as far as the law is concerned. The context in which they are used is important and conveys a message or an intent. In fact some image libraries insist that images from the same library can not be grouped together on a single page. Context, presentation and the impression given is all important.
  6. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    #12, #13: I used to get the same argument in Australia (and again here in South Africa). Brisbane allegedly has terminal urban sprawl making public transport non-viable, but public pressure (including the threat of a growing green vote) steadily improved things over the 9 years I lived there. There are many parts of Brisbane where it's hard to get by without a car, but it's a lot better than it used to be. Where I used to live, through much of the day trains to or from the city were at a frequency of every 10 minutes or better through much of the day. You wouldn't want to take a car into the city in that scenario. Putting on a few extra trains a day is vastly cheaper than building a new road. If electric cars have enough range for weekend use, one option is to park them at home (or somewhere on the grid) most of the time. A few hundred thousand high capacity batteries are a great resource for dealing with spikes in demand and smoothing out the kind of short-term capacity shortages that go with renewables. Look up vehicle-to-grid (V2G) for more.
  7. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Some facts about "Green" Arlington, VA: the $4200 in per capita spending is proportional to energy waste. Taxes statewide are $4300 meaning that Arlington's waste is being paid for by the rest of Virginia. Parking is between $10 and $20 / day, the roads are in poor condition, traffic is pretty bad, yet the Arlington bus system is poorly utilized. Statewide education is $1600 per capita, Arlington is $2100 (almost $20k per pupil) which is bad enough, but the other $2100 per capita spending contains lots of waste meaning energy waste. On the plus side, they try very hard: http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/environmentalservices/EnvironmentalServicesMain.aspx Some of what they do is exemplary such as promoting (passive and active) solar homes. They have a long way to go however if they expect anything like a 200 to 60 drop in kWH/p/d
  8. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    21, Rosco,
    What you have totally failed to explain...
    You have been given link after link to web pages that do explain this. I have no obligation to spend my time personally explaining it to you. Modern climate science is based on the logic and truth of the greenhouse effect. It's been observed, tested and proven. It's not my personal, pet theory. It's existing science, founded on hundreds of years of research and other science. I have unfortunately spent my time responding to the anecdotal examples you've given about various mechanisms (conduction, convection, latent heat). As I have told you several times, the fact that other mechanisms exist and apply in other situations (pistons, radiators, whatever) says nothing about what is going on in the atmosphere. If you want to continue this discussion, please (a) follow the links that have been provided to you, so that you can raise your level of discussion and (b) find an appropriate thread for whatever issue you find troublesome. As I said, if you demonstrate a willingness to learn, I can help you overcome whatever aspects of the science are confusing you. If you do not make a personal effort to learn, however, and simply want to stay stalled on the idea that only convection and conduction are meaningful because you've visibly encountered them in everyday life, then there's really no where for this conversation to go. Please follow the links and learn more about climate science and how things work.
  9. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Scaddenp, HOA's are not all that common here either, and there are better and worse ones. But I mainly wanted a concrete example of lower costs meaning lower energy usage. Reading my previous comment, economic "armageddon" is over the top. The crux of the economic problem is that frictional unemployment is usually resolved in our country at least by personal transportation (along with moving outright, we are a very mobile country). I think that the immediate unemployment from the economic changes would be very large, but take a lot longer to resolve without the personal transportation options we now enjoy. I think there are a fair number of comments of mine on other threads here that show my skepticism to be scientific, not for protection of coal interests specifically or property rights in general. But taking your hypothetical as true, I would not only ban coal power plants, but would tax the coal based purely on CO2 released (as compared to natural gas which I would tax at roughly 50% and oil somewhere in between). I would use the Hansen 100% rebate system so people could pay their electric bills. Apart from electricity, my ideas above still apply which boils down to the fact that people are going to have to step up and exert local control to obtain the necessary efficiencies. The politics to pursuade people to do that is not completely clear, but reducing the central government would be a good start. A big reason I chose to live in a rural HOA is the control and efficiency. We have right-of-way access to all properties where central services make sense, but don't apply it where it doesn't. Contrast that to where I work in Arlington VA, countless examples of stupid stuff from the "solar-powered" trash can in the shade in front of my building to the street being dug up yet again to lay fiber to synchronize traffic lights (wireless seems to be a mystery to them), with the ulterior motive of connecting surveillance systems.
  10. Scott Denning: Reaching Across the Abyss
    What a great talk. As he says, its pointless to worry about details. Its a big problem, and needs solutions. Interestingly lacking from his talk was typical "green" thinking. Not everything was doom and gloom. This is refreshing. Insisting that every effect of increased CO2 will be harmful will make your "opponents" dismiss you out of hand. If there are good effects from extra CO2, you can acknowledge them - even though on balance the effects will be negative.
  11. SkS Weekly Digest #13
    @Paul D, Thanks but that really doesn't seem to have any bearing on their use on this site. They are used now as per above. The use I was proposing seems little different with respect to any licensing issues. If you think it DOES make a difference would you please explain how?
  12. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Sphaerica [inflamatory snipped] You have stated that radiation is the major energy transfer mechanism on Earth or anywhere for that matter. What you have totally failed to explain how radiation is capable of producing any of the effects you claim as the bulk of the atmosphere is transparent to it. Do you believe radiation heats the air in a car's engine driving the piston down ? How ? [inflamatory snipped]
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Please read the comments policy; keep the discussion calm and impersonal, regardless of the perceived provocation. This applies to everybody.
  13. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    jyushchyshyn @56, The Alberta government is hardly a shining example of environmental stewardship-- you chose to highlight/cherry-pick one example (i.e., flaring of natural gas). They are still stalling on the grizzly bear, despite very good science that indicates that this umbrella species should be classified as threatened. Go to Google Earth and look at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains-- note the huge swaths of clear cutting, and the rest of the province has been sliced and diced by access roads and seismic lines. You should also know that those canons are not effective and have failed on more than one occasion in the past-- how someone can defend tailing ponds is beyond me, and I doubt very much that you would like a tailing pond or a tar sands plant anywhere near your house or city of residence. Also it is ludicrous to try and claim that the oil form the tar sands is ethical because in addition to the points made above it neglects the following: 1) The ethical travesty of the negative impacts that this development is having and will continue to have on the First Nations. So sad that some people believe that the human rights of First Nations is not important in this. 2) The fact that the Alberta Government is quite candid that if the USA do not take the oil then they are happy to sell it to whoever is interested, and that includes China who has a very dubious human rights record. 3) The ethical travesty of destroying huge swaths of the Boreal forest and in the process potentially wiping out the Caribou, to mention but one species negatively affected by the development. That is effectively stealing from future generations folks. The tar sands are a blight on Canada's reputation, it is a national disgrace and an embarrassment. And last but not least, a sign of how truly addicted we are to FFs that we have to resort to such extreme and energy intensive measures to extract dirty oil to continue to feed our habit. How myopic and selfish.
  14. It's not bad
    Joseph, I simply objected to turning a thread that deals with a wide range of important topics (those bold paragraph headings in the original post) into a testing ground for various specific predictions. I don't know how you read that as 'I shouldn't question anything.' Nor did I apply the words 'self-appointed' etc to anyone in particular. As to your claim that 'criticism is not welcome,' nothing could be further from the truth. However, criticism of what one person said is vastly different from a critical discussion of ideas. FYI, applying a critical eye to one side certainly looks one-sided, but that's just my opinion. It is a shame that a call for a more substantial discussion should provoke such ire.
  15. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the solar segment of the renewable energy industry in the US is not fairing well in competition with China as evidenced in: “U.S. losing clean-energy race? Solar maker Solyndra bankrupt,” McClatchy News, Aug 30,2011 To access this article, click here. This article includes a graphic of US Trade in Solar Panels from year 2000 thru 2010
  16. Tar Sands Impact on Climate Change
    I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the solar segment of the renewable energy industry in the US is not fairing well in competition with China as evidenced in: “U.S. losing clean-energy race? Solar maker Solyndra bankrupt,” McClatchy News, Aug 30, 2011 To access this article, click here. This article includes a graphic of US Trade in Solar Panels from year 2000 thru 2010
  17. Sea level rise is decelerating
    #28 29 30 31 Tom Curtis The GIA adjustment changes the overall slope of the time line, and gives it a boost of a bit over 0.5 mm/yr. It doesn't change the shape of the curve. That is to say it has nothing to do with acceleration rates of sea level change. The issue isn't the noise and fall at the 1883 mark, the issue is the shape of the two curves over the nearly 130 year time line, and the shape of the curve has everything to do with the question, “Is sea level rise accelerating?” But, many of your points are valid, what I did is usually described as quick and dirty back of the napkin figuring and leaves a lot to be desired and is certainly not the fine tuned product of an academic opus. Which reminds me of an analogy. Two guys buy the exact same type of car both EPA rated to get 30 mpg. One of the guys takes his car to a special mechanic for some fine tuning and now he claims to get 50 mpg. Doesn't add up. No one would believe it. (-Snip-) I’ve made that point several times now. I should give it a rest. We have two separate measuring systems, tide gages and satellites. That they report different numbers ought not be a big surprise. In a machine shop there are many ways to measure dimensions; micrometers, coordinate measuring machines, optical comparators, gage pins, bore gages, calipers, snap gages, rulers, and a host of customized gages. They all give slightly different answers and each has their own uses. Trying to get them to all give the same answers is a fool’s errand. But that's what we seem to be doing by trying to match tide gages with the satellites. And finally there’s an expression about picking the fly specks out of the pepper. Whether the rate of sea level bumps up 0.013 mm per year or not isn’t all that important. After all, if you run the numbers we’re only talking an extra 65 mm in 100 years.
    Response:

    [DB] Speculations of academic fraud snipped.

    "I’ve made that point several times now. I should give it a rest."

    Yes, you should.  Any more violations of the Comments Policy will result in automatic deletion of your entire comments.

    "After all, if you run the numbers we’re only talking an extra 65 mm in 100 years."

    You make the classic error of presuming SLR will be linear when history gives us ample examples that SLR is highly nonlinear.

    "But that's what we seem to be doing by trying to match tide gages with the satellites."

    That's what real scientists, like Dr's Church and White, do.  Amateurs struggling to replicate their work without a foundation in the science and a thorough understanding of the literature are the ones conducting the "fools errand".

  18. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Tom, I would agree that the most likely cause for the deceleration of SLR in the past decade is the slight cooling recently in SST.
  19. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    It would need more than a five-fold improvement in my town, and I'm not 100% convinced that personal vehicles couldn't be made sustainable with some improvements in technology and changes in our attitudes about them, but I do like the notion making it actually feasible to do without a car in more of the US. I don't think there's much of a chance we'll get people to stop driving everywhere until it becomes significantly more of a hassle to drive a car then not. I'm just happy to see the price range for sustainable options approaching competitive in spite of the huge differences in subsidies. Electric vehicles (be they cars, buses, trains, etc.) are going to be an even cleaner more sustainable option when we're not generating so much of that electricity with oil and coal.
  20. It's not bad
    Muoncounter, I thought the whole idea of this website WAS to debate these very issues, instead what I am hearing from you is that I shouldn't question anything you say because it is "difficult science" and it's not "climastrology", and who am I to question them (or maybe I should say, "you"), because after all I am just a "self-appointed, self-taught and self-righteous critic"?! You are correct in one assumption, I am not a scientist, but it is this website that invited debate from the general public (and aren't you a moderator on this site? you certainly act like it), but instead it seems to me more and more that criticism is not welcome on this site. And as an FYI, no I am not going to apply a prediction tester to the other side, simply because the other side is non-scientific, and therefore their predictions have no credibility to start with. I am out.
    Response:

    [DB] "I thought the whole idea of this website WAS to debate these very issues"

    The goal of Skeptical Science is to explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming.  While this site does invite discussion of the science, to characterize that discussion as a "debate" is to lend false credence/false equivalency to much of what comes out of the anti-science portion of the blogosphere (and traditional mass media, mores the pity).

    Essentially, the basics of climate science and global warming are indeed "settled science"; what is being discussed in the literature today is how much warming we can expect, how fast we can expect it, and how bad things will get.

  21. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    18, Rosco,
    You seem to dismiss convection and conduction as trivial mechanisms for energy transfer.
    No, I don't dismiss them, but I don't wave my hands and insist one must be greater than the other just because I'm more comfortable with it. Scientists have measured them all. Trenberth's energy budget (which has been duplicated with minor variations by various scientists) shows 17 W/m2 for thermals (convection), 80 W/m2 for evapotranspiration/latent heat, and 396 W/m2 for radiation. So stop waving your hands and pontificating about your understanding of the mechanisms, because those aren't the issue. What matters is the numbers.
    This isn't nonsense it is basic science.
    No, it's not science, it's throwing around scientific terms and definitions without properly putting it together.
    If you can't see that the shimmering effect of the hot air risisng off hot bitumen is due to the changes in diffraction of the air due to the convective changes in pressure then you are simply mistaken - no one can see infrared radiation but I have seen heat haze regularly.
    Go back and read what I wrote. The shimmering is from the diffraction that results from changes in air pressure, but those changes are not from convection, they are from heating due to radiation.
    If I radiate why can't oxygen and nitrogen ?
    Because you are made of a wide variety of complex molecules that in aggregate absorb and emit radiation in a broad spectrum. O2/N2 being simple diatomic molecules are extremely limited in the frequencies at which they absorb/emit, due to their limited vibrational and rotational modes, and those wavelengths are very, very high (and hence low energy) in the IR area of the spectrum. Please stop with the long, rambling diatribes attempting to demonstrate your understanding of kitchen science. You have a lot to learn before you can discuss this subject, or make an objective judgment about climate science. Until you do learn more, you are wasting everyone's time. Do not post discussions of this here again. If you insist on doing so, please put it on an appropriate thread. This thread is for discussions of the greenhouse effect on Venus. Moderators, please take notice.
    Moderator Response:

    [DB] "Moderators, please take notice."

    Duly noted...and very correct.

  22. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Rosco, do you promise? because I can't tell you how many times I've seen solid science arrayed against doubt, and doubt just ignore it. You might start here, and post further comments there as well.
  23. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Composer99 - sorry I don't understand what you are driving at - I know the sun is the source of almost all energy in our solar system ? The fusion reactions in the sun generate energy - we all agree on that one. Sphaerica lets discuss latent heat :- When a gram of water evaporates it absorbs ~2500 joules of energy without increasing in temperature -hence the term "latent" heat - more obvious when water boils at 100 C - water absorbs ~2500 joules per gram of energy without increasing in temperature while converting to steam. In fact you have to increase the pressure of steam to get it to really useful temperatures for generation of electricity. No one can argue with this fact - it is well documented. When 1 gram of CO2 absorbs 2500 joules what happens ? Well, seeing it does not undergo any phase change it must increase in temperature in proportion to its specific heat. Surely you can't argue with that ? So with a specific heat of less than 1 joule per gram this ~2500 joules must raise the CO2 to over 2500 degrees C. If anyone can show me some documented proof that this is incorrect I'll be happy to read it. As water vapour is approximately 60 times more abundant in the atmosphere than CO2 (0.04% X 60 = ~2.4% water vapour) each gram is carrying enough an amazing amount of energy that would raise the temperature of the 0.04% of the atmosphere to 60 X 2500 degrees. How lucky we are to have water. My point is that we observe the effects of the latent heat everytime we see rain, watch a spectacular storm etc. All that energy from the surface of the oceans is convected high in the atmosphere and released to space. You seem to dismiss convection and conduction as trivial mechanisms for energy transfer. Well the latent heat example shows how unlikely it is that radiation accounts for other than a minor role in energy transport on earth - sure it is the only way in or out but on earth it is relatively insignificant. I say again a car's radiator works by conduction/convection. Hurricanes and tornadoes work by convection not radiation. You can work on your car while the engine is hot despite the radiation from it but accidentally touch and you'll burn. This isn't nonsense it is basic science. I've seen criticisms of the pressure / volume / temperature relationships as a mechanism to explain the difference between Earth and Venus atmospheres. These relationships are basic science that is demonstrable with everyday examples. An internal combustion engine uses these principles. Combustion releases heat which expands the mixture in the cylinder driving the piston down - radiation has nothing to do with this - it is the thermal expansion by the rapid oxidation of the fuel mixture. "How does a glowing ember cool... by radiating the heat, or by conduction, heating all of the air around it purely through contact?" Firstly I never denied radiation transfers energy - I simply say that on earth in our atmosphere it is almost inconsequential. Sure it is the only energy input to the earth but having warmed the earths surfaces - land and oceans - radiation plays only a minor role. The energy from the sun is wayyyy more powerful than the radiation the earth emits - this is obvious. Radiating the heat is a small part of it. Convection is the main reason. The air warms and rises rapidly taking energy with it and is replaced by colder air which does the same. Why do you think a flame rises up and flickers ? It is the rapid oxidation products - CO2 among them - which contain the heat of combustion rapidly riding the thermal set up by convection and being replaced by cooler air which is again heated and rises until all combustion ceases. You can prove this for yourself - put your fonger near the side of a candle flame and you'll feel a bit of radiation. Place your hand above the flame where the real heat transfer mechanism is operating and you'll be visiting the emergency room. If you really believe that the bulk of the atmosphere isn't heated primarily by conduction and convection and doesn't radiate according to its temperature then you are simply mistaken. Give me one example where I can prove radiation transfers heat more than conduction/convection on earth - just one. I've been quite near the lava in hawaii but I wouldn't touch it. If you can't see that the shimmering effect of the hot air risisng off hot bitumen is due to the changes in diffraction of the air due to the convective changes in pressure then you are simply mistaken - no one can see infrared radiation but I have seen heat haze regularly. If I radiate why can't oxygen and nitrogen ? And as they obviously do how are we to differentiate their radiation from the much smaller constituents of the atmosphere by volume or weight. If someone can prove my postulations wrong I'm more than open to listen.
    Response:

    [DB] "If someone can prove my postulations wrong I'm more than open to listen."

    You haven't proven this yet.  In actuality, you are well off-base with your misconceptions.  I would recommend actually studying a text on radiative transfer and working through the problems therein in lieu of continued postulating about things you lack a good grounding in.

  24. How We Know Recent Global Warming Is Not Natural
    A quote from apiratelooksat50 at 02:04 AM on 8 February, 2011 "However, it takes a leap of faith to abandon the repetitive, observed natural climate changes over the history of the Earth (both on the short and long scales) in favor of climate change wholly induced by the actions of humanity." Faith has nothing to do with it. The variables that can be attributable to natural historical variation have been taken into account. The anthropogenic component equates convincingly with increased CO2 levels actually measured. Bear in mind that felling of forests is also a factor. Both factors are the result of human activity.
  25. GHG emission mitigation solutions - a challenge for the Right?
    Well Eric, I am concerned about your "cavalier dismissal of property rights" of those property holders affected by AGW (eg by flooding, drought, sealevel rise etc.) At the core of libertarian thought is that citizens are rights-respecting and yet you have not answered on the question of how to resolve the rights conflict. Not on climate, not on things like air pollution or passive smoking in the earlier thread. I assume that you are similarly horrified by the government interventions on asbestos? I simply don't understand your local government issues. For local government, their only concern is provision of services so surely straightforward translation of revenue to services. Here anyway, all local body elections come down to the tension between what services people want versus what they are willing to pay for. I gather you have different views on the service level to the majority of voters but then the cornerstone of democracy is the tolerance by the minority of the mandate of the majority. Back on topic - nice comments about your "HOA" (Home owners association??? - rare entities here) but do they translate to rest of country? Even so, with eliminating heating and all your cars (really want that?) you are still not even at the half way mark of reduction required. Only the hydro plant could get your further. It seems absurd to trying to turn lifestyle upside down to gain energy reductions because you cant accept any elimination of coal on principle. "crank up carbon taxes and see what happens" is not my proposal. My proposal is ban new coal generation outright (gives coal property owners a long time to change) which is much more straightforward and cheap to administer but I can imagine somewhat too leftest for the US. You have described what you dont want in carbon tax but still seem open to a pigovian tax like Hansen's. If a tax is revenue neutral, how can you suppose this would be economic armageddon? - that is unsubstantiated alarmism. Anyway, what I am asking is what effective policy, for whole country, you would support under my hypothetical case? While you struggle to find something effective within your political values, then I continue struggle to believe your skepticism is anything but politically motivated.
  26. Pete Dunkelberg at 11:54 AM on 1 September 2011
    CO2 is just a trace gas
    Badgersouth @ 13 (link to sod) - The commenters there show Dunning Kruger anger (tm). Evidently sod attracted them from a certain other place, and takes it all calmly. Meanwhile here at Skeptical Science this post is quite good and ought to answer the point. For my part I always thought the "It's a trace gas" argument to be dense. Nature has no feelings, so calling something a belittling name has no physical effect. But perhaps the underlying problem is that some people have no idea how CO2 has its effect. Then when certain professional miscreants get them angry, they are not able to learn. Sod's detailed explanation had no effect on those who think they already know science, but are now (without realizing it) ruled by their anger. Finally, I wonder if a better approach is to just show that our surface environment is much warmer than the Stefan-Boltzmann law predicts, and ask how they explain it.
  27. It's not bad
    Joseph#156: "wasn't much of a cherrypick." The point was this: You found a single example that showed you what you wanted to hear -- and you generalized it to 'there's a disconnect!' That's the 2nd part of the definition of cherrypick I cited. It is this logic that turns 'they got the weather wrong yesterday,' into 'they sure can't say anything about climate.' "global warming of 1 deg over a decade is the same as global warming of 1 deg over a century?" Your example was a glacier melting in a specific year vs another in the same decade or two. Please avoid these giant leaps from the small to the global. This is not 'the science of predictions,' which we usually call 'climastrology.' There are no crystal balls or tea leaves in climate work. This is difficult science, worked by serious folks who see their every word picked over by self-appointed, self-taught and self-righteous critics - who hardly ever have to answer for their own words. Instead, the scientists often have their own words turned against them. BTW, have you applied your prediction-tester to Bastardi's cooling forecast? To Watts on this year's minimum Arctic sea ice extent? If you want to keep a prediction scorecard, please be sure to check both sides of the fence. So yes, let's engage in more substantial issues. If you don't respect that, so be it. We'll let the readers decide on where the disconnect lies for themselves.
  28. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve Case @19, below is the HadSST2 measure of global sea surface temperature for the period of January, 1990 to December, 2011. As you can see, the convex shape of the 60 month mean is not a function simply of one or two years at the start, or just 1998 (and is clearly not a function of 2011, which is not included. Your attempt to obviate my criticism @11 clearly ignores the duration of Pinatubo's cooling effect, and the El Nino's of 2003, 2005, and 2007, and the La Nina's of 2008 and 2009. The fact that it is so easy to pick out a physical cause of the slightly decelerating sea level rise of over the period 1992-2011, and that that cause is sea surface temperatures should not be giving you confidence for the future. More importantly for the present discussion, it should reinforce in you the need to only consider the trends which are statistically significant.
  29. Sceptical Wombat at 11:41 AM on 1 September 2011
    Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    Thanks dana
  30. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve Case @25 Final comments: Just to pick up on two minor points: 1) You have the units wrong on the the y axis of your graph. 2) The large gap between your graph and that by Church and White is almost entirely a consequence of a >50 mm fall in sea level in 1883 in your graph. You may want us to believe that was a genuine fall in sea level, rather than an artifact of your shoddy methods, but we are not that easily conned. When that obvious artifact of noise in your chart exists, however, it is disingenuous to call attention to the gap between your chart and Church and White's as if that gap some how called Church and White's analysis into question.
  31. It's not bad
    Muoncounter#153 Every posting that rebutted mine that contained a single link to prove the poster's position was a cherrypick as well, but did anyone point that out? I didn't go to great lengths to find this article, it took me literally 1-2 minutes with a single google search to find this article. So it wasn't much of a cherrypick. So you are saying it is a strawman because the substantive issue in the prediction is the melting of the glacier not so much the time it takes to melt??? So global warming of 1 deg over a decade is the same as global warming of 1 deg over a century? Why shouldn't we keep score of the predictions as it relates to their timeline? And how is this not a substantive issue? I would say that us, (yes US!), AGW proponents have the obligations to keep score much less the willingness! I would have expected you to say something to the effect that, yes Hardy messed up, but if you took all the predictions as a whole then the number of studies who got it right vs. the ones who got it wrong is 10-1, or something to that effect. Then I would have expected you to give me a link showing this (I would love to see this, btw). That answer I would have respected, instead of brushing this off by this, "It is far more productive if we engage in substantial issues", i.e. "let's the change the subject" business. If anything this answer just reinforces any reader's belief in a disconnect between the predictions and the current trends
  32. It's not bad
    #150, 152 Joseph, we don't base our observations on a single glacier, see for example this post most glaciers worldwide are retreating and that trend is accelerating. Note John Cook's second-last sentence. A vast amount of information underpins the projections, and the tendency has been for the IPCC to err on the conservative side in their projections.
  33. It's not bad
    For some credibility, please pick a prediction from AR4 that you think is overstated (ie something with reputable science behind it). Also, the statements about what is happening at this time are not full of doom & gloom. Furthermore 2 key ones (sealevel rise and arctic ice loss) show how conservative the predictions were. What are the indicators that you would choose, that if went bad would make you say "OMG - I've been an idiot"? The two for me (currently doing okay but expected to go bad) would be world mortality and global grain production. The problem is that by the time you see a bad 10 year trend in these, a lot of people would have suffered. You want to wait till the house is burning down?
  34. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve Case @25: @7 you said:
    "I intend to ignore any further critiques you have about the PSMSL data as it's not the issue."
    I responded @8:
    " If you want to introduce your chart as evidence, you need to defend its construction. If you don't want to defend its construction, you ought to withdraw it. As it stands, however, it appears you want to make use of a graph in which artifacts of the data will introduce a very large amount of noise."
    Well, it turns out that you do want to introduce your chart as evidence, and have done so @15, @18, and @25. However, you show no inclination to defend it against previously mounted criticisms which show the chart to be dominated by noise. Rather, you falsely call it a "straight forward analysis", using a label rather than a defense of your methods to suggest the chart is actually worth anything. So let's compare Church and White's analysis with your supposedly straightforward analysis: Quality Control: Church & White - extensive vetting for spurious trends in the data; Case: None. Grouping: Church and White: Data grouped by cell with a maximum 250 km radius from the center point of the cell; Case: Data grouped by arbitrary 'coastlines' with no consistent principle in determining coastlines applied across all data. Specifically, all nations are given a separate coast line no matter how small. Some coast lines ared divided by necessity of contiguous status. Thus Canada has two coast lines, one for the west coast, and one for the east and north coast. In contrast the US has separate coastlines for the contiguous Gulf and East coast coastlines. Australia has just one coastline for the entire continent plus offshore islands, while the US has separate coastlines for not just the Gulf and east coast, but also for the west coast, for Alaska, for Hawaii, and for the Aleutians. Correction poor geographical sampling: Church and White:
    "Our approach relies on resolving large-scale ocean variability by using as many tide gauges as possible to estimate the global distribution of sea level for each month/year between 1950 and 2000. We use sea surface height anomaly satellite altimeter data to estimate the global covariance structure as expressed in empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs). We then estimate the amplitude of these EOFs by using the relatively sparse but longer tide gauge records. The estimated (reconstructed) global distribution of sea level for each month is obtained as the sum of these EOFs.
    Case: None Correction for Glacial Isostatic Adjustment: Church and White: Applied; Case: None. Correction for large scale changes in air pressure: Church and White: Reverse Barometric applied; Case: None. Personally, I do not think geopolitics to be the most straightforward way to group data in determining mean sea level. That is, however, the basis of your method. Beyond that, what distinguishes your method is the assumption that the silting of estuaries, land slumping or subsidence etc are of no relevance in measuring sea levels. So while your method can be called simplistic, it is false to call it straight forward.
  35. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Norman#106: Nicely done! You seem to be suggesting a strong anthropogenic influence over weather conditions. It is nice to hear such an effective rebuttal to 'its not us.' You're also showing direct evidence that high clouds (formed from contrails) are a strong positive feedback: Cloud cover subsequently decreased in the west and increased over much of the eastern half of the country during the next two days, producing predominantly negative three-day OLR changes in the east and positive values in parts of the west. To rephrase, increased clouds in the east resulted in less OLR, ie, more heat retained. That nicely rebuts such silliness as Spencer's magic clouds and the general desire to hang a negative feedback on clouds (largely because its cooler on cloudy days). BTW, that also pops the balloon of the GCR argument: if GCRs do in fact stimulate high cloud nucleation (which is not proven), then by the same logic those high clouds contribute to warming, not cooling. You've shown that Svensmark and his adherents have it all backwards! And certainly there can now be no doubt that sensitivity is quite high, as there were measurable temperature differences for what must be considered a relatively small causal agent. But your 'manmade but not CO2' doesn't do much. Three days with few contrails do not a multi-year trend make.
  36. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    'We have seen the models founder at the decadal time scale... " Climate models suck at predicting the stock market and predicting tomorrow's weather too, because , well because they are climate models - eg models to predict 30 year averages. Your point?
  37. Sea level rise is decelerating
    Steve Case @25: Preliminary points: 1) Records where not eliminated if they where longer than 2 years in length (as you, perhaps mistakenly, indicate), but because they were shorter than two years after 1 or 2 month gaps in the record had been infilled. The obvious reason is that a 2 year record tells you almost nothing about long term trends. 2) The 1063 records eliminated on the basis of redundancy where eliminated because they where duplicate records. 3) The 95 records eliminated because they where outside the Topex coverage where eliminated because the study was an explicit comparison of the tidal gauge and Topex data. Such a comparison can only be sensibly be made over the area in which Topex gathers data. 4) Likewise the data eliminated because it was more than 250 km from one of the Topex grid points was eliminated because it could not be directly compared to Topex data. 5) Contrary to your claim, and as you yourself calculated, there were 713 records eliminated because disagreement among closely located tide gauges, physical location, very noisy data, or very high trends provided reason to believe the tide gauge was measuring unusual local circumstances (subsidences, siltation, etc) rather than global changes in sea level. That the number eliminated for each of these reasons is not recorded separately is irrelevant. 6) No records where eliminated by combination. Combination means that "Where there were multiple tide gauges for a single grid point, the change in height at each time step were averaged to produce a single time series." If we are to call that "elimination" then when you took averages of data for each coast line, you 'eliminated' over 1033 records when you took averages by coastline (see your @7) I need to make these preliminary points to clean up your tendentious and inaccurate description of Church and White's method.
  38. Mythic Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty
    Nope, but I'll take some dried figs if you have any left. They help loosen the, uh, "isms." Baked peaches do that too, and I just had some. Here, I'll demonstrate: trunkmonkey: "Postmodernism reacted that emergent phenomena in complicated systems made them irreducable, at least in their behavior." That's just another way of saying "structures are not absolute." It's Marx correcting Hegel. Where do you go from there? You imply that models are pointless because they are structures trying to represent complex systems featuring emergent phenomena. So what? Is that an attack on models? If so, from what position do you attack? Do you have anything better to offer? Or do you wander around without a plan all day? Or you have a plan but it causes you great angst because you know it's ultimately pointless? So, yes, it was a joke, but probably not the kind that gets a laugh from the audience. Post-structural thought has been around for a long time (Chaucer exhibits it on occasion). It is only the condition of postmodernity that allows it to gain a special importance. That importance is in the service of rejecting any sort of metanarrative (God, Nation, ethical systems) that might place obligations on the individual as the individual operates (tries to survive) under the current mode of production. It works to break down socially-constructed morality, which can then be replaced with the morality of the 'free market' (Objectivism, in one form). The individual ends up being the ultimate source of truth, choosing whatever truths serve individual interests. And, I must say, what's up with that?
  39. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Rosco, your misconceptions are as Sphaerica says in #12, taking you in spectacularly wrong directions. I can only suggest that you put those misconceptions aside, open your mind and do some reading. It reads like you have a vague idea of many of the basics, but either can't or won't put them together in the right order. You'll find a lot of useful information around this site, of course! But for some other reading suggestions: Read Sphaerica's link to Spencer Weart. I'd suggest Science of Doom, which has a very good series called CO2: an Insignificant Trace Gas, as well as articles about back radiation and about the greenhouse effect. I'd also recommend Richard Alley's superb lecture at AGU 2009 on why CO2 is the most important control knob on our climate. You'll find, if you keep your mind open enough to rational explanation and fight your preconceptions, that there is nothing about the CO2 greenhouse effect that is in contravention with physics. It's actually an outcome of physics.
  40. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    Sure Wombat, happy to. The relevant formula is dT = a*dF where dT is the change in temperature, a is the climate sensitivity parameter, and dF is the change in radiative forcing. In the SAR case, for dF = 4.37, they found dT = 2.5°C. So if we plug that into the formula: a = dT/dF = 2.5/4.37 = 0.57°C per W/m2 So for every 1 W/m2 forcing, the model results in 0.57°C warming. If we then use that climate sensitivity parameter to calculate what temperature change we would expect from the forcing associated with a doubling of CO2 (3.7 W/m2), we get: dT = 0.57 * 3.7 = 2.12°C What the SAR did was to overestimate how much of an energy imbalance is caused by a doubling of CO2. As a result, they also overestimated the temperature change in their model resulting from that doubling of CO2. And so they thought their model was more sensitive to CO2 doubling than it actually is. An important distinction is that they overestimated the model sensitivity specifically to doubled CO2, because they overestimated the forcing associated with doubled CO2. But the sensitivity parameter (0.57°C per W/m2) remains unchanged. Clear as mud?
  41. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    #9 Ahhh, but if there were NO cars, and public transport improved five-fold as a result, you would indeed be able to 'hop-on-hop-off' public transport to complete your errands. Personal vehicles are an unsustainable indulgence, purely because of the resources they consume, never mind the degredaton of the atmosphere, climate, vehicle accidents and hospital costs, etc etc etc. But yeah, in the ABSENCE of an effective public transport system, EV works 'better' than ICE.
  42. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    I don't dispute that CO2 absorbs infrared energy and increases in temperature. But an equilibrium point is reached where input equals output and no further heating can take place without further energy input.
    Perhaps you are not familiar, then, with that giant ball of burning gas one sees in the sky during the day? The one that is constantly bombarding the Earth (daylight side) with energy...
  43. It's not bad
    Joseph#152: By definition, a cherry pick is the use of a small subset of the available data, usually to draw a pre-conceived conclusion. This is only a 'disconnect' for people who keep score based on who said what when. Those who understand the comment made by Hardy can see that such a prediction is justifiably updated by more complete analysis. This is the normal process of science or for that matter any predictive endeavor. BTW, setting up a misrepresentation of another's argument so it can then be shown as a potential 'disconnect' is known as a strawman. In this case, 'they got the date the glacier would melt wrong' is a strawman. It is far more productive if we engage in substantial issues.
  44. Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    Pete - some days I just ride my bicycle. Where I live it never gets quite cold enough that I can't ride my moped. Sometimes I ride in the rain, and sometimes I carpool with my wife if it's raining too hard.
  45. Pete Dunkelberg at 10:13 AM on 1 September 2011
    Michaels Mischief #2: Opposing Climate Solutions
    dana @ 3, "I commute to work most days on an electric moped...." I'm interested in getting something like that. So what stops you other days? Rain? Cold? Both?
  46. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    14, Rosco, Latent heat: As long as water vapor stays as vapor, it remains as kinetic energy in the water vapor. When that water vapor condenses, that energy is passed to other molecules in the surrounding atmosphere. This serves to transfer some energy from the surface higher up in the atmosphere, an amount that has been measured and quantified and is roughly 1/5th that which is transferred through radiation. What's your point? Badly burnt: You do this a lot. You seem to have a personal need to correlate all concepts to personal experience, and then you make the mistake of performing value comparisons based on such experiences. That you can be burnt by a hot object says nothing. How does a glowing ember cool... by radiating the heat, or by conduction, heating all of the air around it purely through contact? If you put your hand near but not on a burning ember, do you feel the heat? How, if you aren't touching it? No, it's not because it has heated the air (it has, but not that much, and you wouldn't feel the heat emanating from the object). You are directly feeling the radiation. When the sun hits your face, do you feel the heat? Radiation. Oxygen and nitrogen: I didn't say they don't get hot, that's absurd. I said they don't appreciably emit that heat as radiation in quantities and time scales that are relevant to the current atmosphere, as compared to CO2 and H2O. In a pure O2/N2 atmosphere that radiation would be the only way that the atmosphere can cool. In our atmosphere, O2/N2 act instead as a buffer. Why do you think down vests are so warm? Why is all insulation primarily pockets of air? Shimmering: You're doing it again. You can see it, so it must be more important than radiation. This is not a viable or effective argument. But, interestingly, you are wrong here. The air near the ground is being heated through radiation which is absorbed by the H2O and CO2 in the atmosphere, and then conveyed to the O2 and N2 through collisions. More heating occurs closer to the surface, and enough to cause changes in air density which produce the shimmer. This is not occurring through conduction, even if you imagine that to be the case because the layer of air is close to the surface. Radiators: Proving that conduction exists does not prove that it is the primary mechanism in heat transfer in the atmosphere. Again, you are wedded to what is familiar to you, and dismissing anything that is too abstract for you to consider. This mindset is a trap. Oxygen/nitrogen radiation: Look up the numbers. Look at this spectral analysis and this one. Really, do you think science is done by just squinting one eye and sort of guestimating everything? Everything radiates in proportion to its temperature: No!!! This is true on a macroscopic level, but it is not that simple. On the molecular and subatomic level, quantum mechanics interferes. Things absorb and radiate only in specific wavelengths, and that greatly complicates the interactions. You have a lot of studying to do. This is a denier site, but a lot of the science is very good and accurate. Try starting there. To imply otherwise is in contravention of physics.Okay, this is getting silly. If you have real questions and want to learn, I will help. If you want to just spout nonsense and dig in your heels, do it on your own... but find the proper thread for it. This one isn't it.
  47. Sceptical Wombat at 10:09 AM on 1 September 2011
    Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: IPCC SAR
    However, the SAR used a radiative forcing of 4.37 W/m2 for a doubling of atmospheric CO2. The IPCC TAR updated this value five years later with the value which is still in use today, 3.7 W/m2 (see TAR WGI Appendix 9.1). Since the SAR overestimated the energy imbalance caused by a doubling of CO2, they also overestimated the climate sensitivity of their model. You appear to be saying that the SAR overestimated the climate sensitivity of their model and therefore underestimated the global temperature change. This is a bit counter intuitive. I'm sure that there is a perfectly good explanation but could you please elucidate for my benefit?
  48. It's not bad
    No cherry picking, as a matter of fact your posting goes to my point! When scientists don't have all the data or all the variables and they make forecasts based on that, then that disconnect is created. Again this is not to say that global warming is not happening, or is not melting Kilimanjaro's ice, it just says that maybe there is a disconnect between currents trends vs. projections.
  49. The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
    Here is some actual empirical evidence giving a reasonable alternative explanation for the decrease in DTR over the last few decades. It is manmade but not CO2 emissions. The effect of decreased DTR is most noticeable over land areas and this article also explains this. Scientific explanation for decrease in DTR. From this article my DTR change for Omaha Nebraska (Post # 101) as compared to the long term norm makes a lot of sense now.
  50. Venus doesn't have a runaway greenhouse effect
    Sphaerica Where does the latent heat go ? If radiation is so powerful why is it you get really badly burnt when you touch a hot object while you can stand near it for long periods ? What special properties do oxygen and nitrogen possess that allows them to defy the laws of physics ? You don't believe oxygen and nitrogen get hot ? Then hot air balloons are really hot "greenhouse gas" balloons ? What is the shimmering you see rising from hot bitumen during the day - radiation ? I don't think so - it is diffraction caused by the rapid movement of heated air convection reducing the local viscosity of the air through convection. Even a car's radiator doesn't work by "radiation" - it works by conduction as the water absorbs the engines heat and then by conduction and convection as the air passes over it. Stop the car, leave the motor running and disconnect the fan and see how effective radiation is at removing heat. I'll see you at the mechanics as you try to explain why it shouldn't have destroyed itself through overheating. How do you know oxygen and nitrogen don't radiate in relevant amounts ? So when I'm in the shade in the desert with air temperatures of 45 +C and low humidity it is radiation it is the 0.04% CO2 which is heating me up ? Everything radiates in proportion to its temperature - including oxygen and nitrogen and CO2. The theoretical explanations of bond stretching and vibrations associated with triatomic molecules does not imply they radiated in excess of their temperatures - it is an attempt to explain their absorbtive properties nothing more. To imply otherwise is in contravention of physics.

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