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  1611  1612  1613  1614  1615  1616  1617  1618  1619  1620  1621  1622  1623  1624  1625  1626  Next

Comments 80901 to 80950:

  1. The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
    On the idea that heating of the thermosphere heats the surface - Keeping Te constant - that is, keeping the total solar heating of the climate system constant: No. Without any greenhouse effect of the absorption-emission kind, if the surface is a blackbody for LW radiation, then the surface temperature will be Te regardless of where solar heating is occuring. No matter how hot the stratosphere/thermosphere gets. Except for the effect that at sufficient temperature, the upper atmosphere could start to emit a significant amount of radiation in the SW part of the spectrum - in which case the surface would be cooler. Not at all. The absence of the heating will make all convective the atmosphere between the surface and the thermosphere and that will establish Venus-like conditions. Not at all. The absence of sufficient solar heating and/or sufficient greenhouse effect will not allow that. Yes, the potential (depends on albedo effects) removal of ~ 10 W/m2 solar heating from the surface/troposphere required to give that heating to the stratosphere/mesosphere (I think mainly the upper stratosphere), minus the effect of the increased downward LW flux from the upper atmospheric warming (perhaps half of the heating, maybe 5 W/m2, give or take - well, it's somewhere between zero and the involved solar heating of the upper atmopshere), will have a cooling effect on the surface+troposphere, which will tend to reduce tropopause height. Reversing this - eliminating solar heating of the ozone layer and allowing that to heat the surface+troposphere, will warm the surface+troposphere and, via that and maybe also the cooling of the upper atmosphere, will raise the tropopause level. But (see Hartmann, "Global Physical Climatology", 1994, p. 70), the warming of the troposphere (without compositional feedbacks) from removing ozone is small - it doesn't even show up in the graph on Hartmann, p.70 - although this could be because of the additional cooling effect of removing ozone's LW opacity, which is seperate from the issue of solar heating. Also, the height of the tropopause stays below 20 km in that graph (the graph has a relatively old citation but the basics of radiation have been understood for a long time), although it is not as sharply defined, the lapse rate definitely does decrease with height going up above roughly ~17 or 20 km or so, the tropopause stays below 20 km, perhaps going to maybe somewhere around 70 mb, whereas before removing ozone it was ~ 150 mb, give or take (I'm very quickly estimating from a graph, but it definitely doesn't get much above 20 km). Ozone could still heat some of the upper atmosphere by absorbing a LW flux from below, and this effect is also presumably removed in this graph. And why should this be so? Well with a difference of only 10 W/m2 (minus counteracting effects), you can only heat the surface+tropopause so much. How much of a convective heat flux would be required to sustain a troposphere up to ~ 85 km with the 85 km level remaining at it's present temperature? Consider how much you'd be shifting the temperature profile, and the kind of radiative disequilbrium (net radiant cooling) that would cause. And that would have to be balanced by net radiant heating at the surface. How could the surface be warmed up so much, and yet still have enough net radiant heating to supply the necessary convection? You'd need to boost solar heating and/or the greenhouse effect considerably. Let's make this simpler and just give the ~ 10 W/m2 to the troposphere+surface while retaining solar heating of the upper atmosphere, let the surface+troposphere warm up a little, the tropopause shift a little, but it still looks pretty much the same as now (in a big picture, purely abiotic way, a not caring about economic and environmental effects sort of way). The tropopause temperature is not much different. If it were only the solar heating of the ozone layer that stood in the way of having continuous convection from the surface to 85 km, then the surface would have to be warm enough for an adiabat from the surface to intersect the temperature profile as is at about that level, 85 km; - actually higher then that, because they'll be some cooling effect when you let convection from the troposphere get higher by removing overlying solar heating. The thing is, if you draw such a line you'd see it would be warmer than all points are in between already. How can removing solar heating of the ozone layer result in warming there? Here is missing the thermal flux that the surface yields to the atmosphere by conduction and as sensible heat I never said that the atmosphere doesn't recieve heat from the surface by more than radiation which can leave the atmosphere only once the [energy] of the colliding molecules has been transformed to radiative energy Yes. within the isothermal regions that allow the phase transition from the non-excited to excited state and so the photons emission. Well that's probably the most fundamental mistake you are making. You do not need to have an isothermal region in order for photons to be emitted (or absorbed). Have you ever seen the incandescent glow of an electric range on a stove top? Consider what happens when you turn it off - the range cools off - but while the temperature is changing, it still has a non-zero temperature that is actually quite high, and it continues to glow for a while. It may also glow unevenly because the temperature isn't constant throughout it - this doesn't prevent smaller pieces of it from having high nonzero temperatures and thus they can still emit such radiation. If you are thinking that the air can't have net radiant cooling while it is undergoing an adiabatic process - well, for individual parcels that are undergoing perfectly adiabatic processes, yes. But convective heating has to be balanced by some non-convective cooling, and this doesn't all happen only at the tropopause, etc. (See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/06/unforced-variations-june-2011/comment-page-10/#comment-209281 ). Really, convection tends to bring the lapse rate towards being adiabatic, and under the right conditions this can be done very effectively, but this only happens spontaneously (as opposed to being forced from some external work input like large tides - or alien spaceships sticking giant blenders into the atmosphere - you get the idea) if the lapse rate without convection became unstable to said convection; the convection causes radiative disequilbrium, meaning there is net radiant heating and net radiant cooling in some places. This can't be avoided - unless radiant equilibrium just happens to line up that way, an adiabatic lapse rate requires diabatic processes to be sustained - if this ever meant that the lapse rate can't actually be exactly adiabatic, so be it (PS see point in Real Climate comment regarding moist adiabatic rising and dry sinking, although what I'm saying still generally applies to a dry atmosphere as well). Related point: certainly the idea of a single radiative-convective temperature profile is not meant to imply that nothing deviates from it even the slightest, or you couldn't even have a convective heat flux (what goes up has to be at a different temperature than what goes down in order for a sensible heat flux to exist; and the latent heat eventually becomes sensible heat). For Earthly conditions (global annual average) the net radiant heating is at the surface and net radiant cooling is distributed throughout the troposphere. Which, by the way, is not entirely all directly to space (see the last part of that Real Climate comment). Convection tends to bring the troposphere toward an adiabatic lapse rate because otherwise the atmosphere gets more unstable and convection becomes even more likely to happen or more vigorous, but ongoing convection requires in heating and cooling that must be balanced by radiation - entirely and purely adiabatic processes would have the same warm air coming down after going up, along the exact same adiabat, and thus you wouldn't have a net nonzero convective heat flux that way. What comes down has to be cooler. Also, not all parcels reach the tropopause before turning around (related: have you ever noticed cumulus clouds that never became cumulonimbus?). Just a point. Why do you continue to argue that all the thermo kinetics is founded on the radiative transfer, completely omitting the conduction and, over all, the convection, or leaving them a very marginal role? As far as I know, the heat output of a column radiator for room heating plan has the ratio radiative-heat/convective-heat equal about to 1/3, i.e., the convective effect is the 300% of the radiative one. Then neglecting the convection would be very hazardous and non-real. I've left conduction/diffusion and convection all the role they need to have. Convection is very important in the troposphere / between the surface and troposphere (and conduction/diffusion being a part of that at the surface-air interface). Conduction/diffusion become significant again very high up where the mean free paths are sufficiently large - I had earlier not thought of this. And there is some transport of heat (I guess some of it is latent-chemical) in the stratosphere and mesosphere - but this is driven by work supplied from below, and the stratosphere and mesosphere are not convective in the way the troposphere is. To a good first approximation the stratosphere, and I think much of the mesosphere, is in radiative equilibrium; the vast majority of the upper atmosphere by mass is the stratosphere so perhaps I didn't pay enough attention to the potential for radiative disequilibrium higher up; but anyway, certainly the ozone layer is not preventing the Earth from becoming like Venus as far as temperature is concerned. Why should the upper atmosphere act just like a room with heater?
  2. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Camburn@91 Then we need only wait another 400 years to determine if decisive action is called for!
  3. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    I will also add that the air is quit pleasant as I just just passed the 111th floor. I note my rate of decent has stabalized, allowing adequate time to observe my area of landing. There seems several to choose from, so I am in the process of deciding which soft spot to pick.
  4. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    IMHO an extreme event is something that has not occured in the past 500 years. As far as frequency, from the literature posted it is obvious that, at this time, it is impossible to determine if events have increased, decreased, or stayed stable.
  5. Eric the Red at 06:31 AM on 29 June 2011
    2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    While the effects may indeed be exponential, and we cannot see or measure them yet, they could also be logarthimic - decelerating as CO2 increases. The problem is that the noise is too large to make accurate connections. While your analogy is nice, I feel we will know long before he hits the ground.
  6. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    sout - as you can see in Figure 1, Easterbrook calls 1977-2000 a "warm period" (which basically means positive PDO). He doesn't really have a model, so it can't be tested with hindcasting. As I noted in comment #6, Easterbrook's projections are much more crude than real computer models. He also doesn't really explain the long-term trend. I suspect he would say that the "warm periods" have just been warmer on average than the "cool periods" have been cool. And he might say that on average, solar activity is higher now than a few centuries ago, which is true (though it can't explan very much of the recent warming).
  7. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    @Robert Murphy 56 & 57: Muchos gracias!
  8. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    Is Texas Gov Rick Perry already in your database?
  9. Robert Murphy at 05:28 AM on 29 June 2011
    Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    "There’s a variety of factors that contribute to the earth warming and cooling, and to me this is an opportunity for the left to create—it’s a beautifully concocted scheme because they know that the earth is gonna cool and warm. It’s been on a warming trend so they said, “Oh, let’s take advantage of that and say that we need the government to come in and regulate your life some more because it’s getting warmer,” just like they did in the seventies when it was getting cool, they needed the government to come in and regulate your life because it’s getting cooler. It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life, and I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative." Rick Santorum on Rush Limbaugh
  10. Robert Murphy at 05:21 AM on 29 June 2011
    Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    "I believe the earth gets warmer and I also believe the earth gets cooler," Santorum said. "And I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man, through the production of CO2 — which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas — is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors, El Niño, La Niña, sunspots, moisture in the air. There's a variety of factors that contribute to the Earth warming and cooling." Rick Santorum
  11. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 05:18 AM on 29 June 2011
    Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    In the article you quote Don Easterbrook as saying "the 30-years of global cooling that we experienced from ~1945 to 1977. However, also likely are several other possibilities (1) the much deeper cooling that occurred during the 1880 to ~1915 cool period, (2) the still deeper cooling that took place from about 1790 to 1820 during the Dalton sunspot minimum, and (3) the drastic cooling that occurred from 1650 to 1700 during the Maunder sunspot minimum." My question is, why did he pick the start period for his ummm 'predictions'? Did he just conveniently skip all the years from 1977 to now? And how successful is his 'model' in hindcasting? How does he explain why it got so hot in recent years - or the overall rise in temperature of the entire past century? If his 'cycles' were merely 'cycles', why is the temperature not yet back to, say, that of 1700? Just when does he expect the whole 'cycle' to complete? A lot of questions, I know. I don't expect him to answer any of them :D
  12. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Eric #9 - yes, as mentioned towards the beginning of the post, Figure 1 came from a presentation Easterbrook gave at the AGU conference in 2008, re-posted on WUWT. He had made very similar projections since 1998. Recently in the report you reference co-authored with D'Aleo, they revised the figure to include the very strange 2000-2008 temperature, probably from UAH. However, UAH has a different baseline than the the surface temperature dataset used up to 2000 (probably HadCRUT). I don't know how they spliced the two together, but there seems to be something shady going on there. Figures 1 and 2 in the post above do basically match, by the way, except we used GISTemp as opposed to whatever IPCC temperature data Easterbrook used up to 2000.
  13. Eric the Red at 04:28 AM on 29 June 2011
    Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Ok, let's assume that he's using fuzzy data for temperatures. It is the 2000-2010 range that is causing me some concern. Figs. 1 and 2 do not appear to match, and neither seem to agree with the figure from his report (link above). His report seems to start his projection from 2008 and a temperature anomaly of ~0.2C. Your projections seem to start at 2001 and an anomaly of 0.4C. Did Easterbrook present an earlier version of this report to which you are referring?
  14. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Don is not very careful with accuracy. He often mentions the 1977-1998 warm period to be followed by the current cool period. yet on page 13 he refers to the 1977-2007 warm period. That is because the Mount Baker glaciers were still retreating rapidly. He also uses for Figure 20c and 21c images I took, not Jon Scurlock who is a great aerial photographer. Since he emailed me about using these images, he knows well where they came from. I have provided a more up to date look at Boulder Glacier and Easton Glacier
  15. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Thanks Dana, As you know from me, how anybody can say this much temp(one way or the other) will be this i can not understand,as you are a more learned man than myself on this i can see some things better know, though i am still a skeptic i have been learning. sorry i did not get back to you on the Renewables post family matters came up. You know how that goes. I still have a few questions on renewables, will address them later.
  16. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    Can you provide some quotes (with links) for Santorum that we can add to the database, badger?
  17. Debunking Climate Myths from Politicians
    Add former US Sen(R-PA)Rick Santorioum who is currently seeking the Repblican presidential nominmation.
  18. Eric the Red at 03:49 AM on 29 June 2011
    The Last Interglacial - An Analogue for the Future?
    Somes_J Thanks for the links. Apologies for the long delay.
  19. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Hi grayman. Although I used GISS in the graph, I actually used the Wood for Trees composite in the numerical analysis, which is the composite of GISTemp, HadCRUT, UAH, and RSS. I did that to avoid using a single particular data set. But there's not really much difference between GISTemp and HadCRUT, though the latter shows a bit less warming over the past decade. Easterbrook uses a "model" in the sense that any prediction must use a model. His model assumes that PDO, AMO and sunspots dominate global temperature change, and that future changes will be similar to past changes. But I don't think he's using any sort of computer model. His process appears to be much more crude.
  20. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    grayman @4, for the "cooling based on 1945-1977" prediction he appears to just append a smoothed version of one of the HadCRU global temperature indexes from 1945 to about 1995. He then appears to draw his own line to 2060, then appends the 1945-1995 line again. For the "cooling based on 1880-1915 prediction, he appears to use the same technique, but uses the HadCRU temp from 1880 to 1940. The last section (2090 onwards) appears to be free form in both cases. I believe this to be his procedure based on the similarity of the relevant curves rather than any stated procedure by Easterbrook.
  21. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Hi Dana, I see you use GISTEMP and NASA GISS, what about HADCRUT, how do they compare? Does Don use a model or is he just plotting on a graph?
  22. Bob Carter’s climate counter-consensus is an alternate reality
    Speaking of volcanoes, check out: Humans Dwarf Volcanoes for CO2 Emissions by Jessica Marshall and posted (June 27) on Discovery News. The gist of the article: 1. Human activities emit roughly 135 times as much climate-warming carbon dioxide as volcanoes each year. 2. Volcanoes emit less than cars and trucks, and less, even, than cement production. 3. Climate change skeptics have claimed the opposite
  23. Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    CW - I recommend you read Glenn's "Of Averages and Anomalies" series, which explains how the surface temperature datasets are compiled. In particular, Part 2A explains the GISS 1200 km extrapolation.
  24. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    jhudsy - as you can see in Figure 1, Easterbrook did not include error bars in his projections. The error bars in the surface temperature data are approximately +/- 0.05°C. Therefore, Easterbrook is already wrong by a large margin outside of the margin of error. Eric - as noted in the post, Easterbrook claims to have gotten the temp data in Figure 1 from one of the IPCC reports (TAR, I presume). Figure 42 in the paper you reference is unclear. The black line between 2000 and 2008 may be from UAH.
  25. Eric the Red at 02:46 AM on 29 June 2011
    Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    Does anyone know what temperature dataset Easterbrook is using. It does not resemble anything I can envision. His projections start from a 2008 value of about +0.2C. Compare fig. 1 & 2 above with fig. 42 from the Easterbrook report. http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research/global/easterbrook_climate-cycle-evidence.pdf
  26. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Sphaerica @88, after I read your first paragraph, the joke of the optimist leaping of a skyscraper came to mind. Unfortunately it came to yours first, so I don't get to pretend I'm clever.
  27. Bob Lacatena at 02:25 AM on 29 June 2011
    2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    I need to point out that all efforts to measure and dismiss extreme weather events through either death tolls or economic losses fail abysmally on two counts. The first is that the noise in the numbers is far too great. Modern warning systems, building methods, response plans and equipment, and such far, far outweigh the strength or frequency of events. There's just no way to properly compare 1950 to 2010 using economics or fatalities and to say with any degree of confidence whatsoever "there's nothing to worry about." That's just looking for the silver lining by very purposefully ignoring the entire cloud. The second is that we're only into the very, very earliest start of climate change. This is the worst denial distraction there is: "I don't see anything to worry about yet." Except that we haven't doubled CO2 yet, even though it seems beyond inevitable, and the impacts of the CO2 that we have added have not yet been felt (i.e. the temperature of the earth is still trying to catch up, and slow feedbacks like albedo change and additional bio-generated CO2 have not yet made its way into the system). More than this, I expect changes in weather (this is unsupported and unsupportable opinion, not fact) to be incremental and non-linear. I think there will be points reached where people suddenly go "holy cow, when did all this start?" We may even be there now, or maybe it will only happen for the moment during ENSO events. We'll see, unfortunately. But I go once again to my favorite analogy, the story of the man who jumped from the top of a skyscraper, and was heard to remark, each time he passed an open window, "so far, so good." That, in a nutshell, is most denial to me, and the seeming perspective of Norman, Camburn, Eric the Red, and others. "So far, so good," they say, as the air whistles in their ears and they watch the windows of the building fly by, one by one.... but not forever.
  28. The Planetary Greenhouse Engine Revisited
    @ Patrick Heating of the thermosphere has nothing to do with avoiding runaway. I clear my thought. There is the CO2 that avoid the runaway. An atmosphere perfectly transparent and heated solely at its bottom would be isothermal at T=Te. The thermosphere adds a heating source at its top and this heat has to reach the surface so that it can be radiated to space. Thus the surface would have a temperature Ts greater than Te (how much?), just below the thermosphere there would be a temperature Tt = Ts + 1.2e5*Ф/λ, i.e., we had Tt – Ts = 4.8e7*Ф and, even with a specific thermal flux Ф = 1W/m², we had Tt – Ts = 48000000 °C. Take away the ozone layer and the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere get colder. Not at all. The absence of the heating will make all convective the atmosphere between the surface and the thermosphere and that will establish Venus-like conditions. But all the processes that do occur, including those which excite or relax a molecule so that it may emit a photon or so that it may not emit a photon after just absorbing one, are occuring in any sufficient population of molecules with sufficient collisional frequency. At LTE among the non-photons, which can be approximately maintained by sufficient collisional frequency, the distribution of energy among states is such that the fraction of molecules with some probability of absorbing any incident photons and the fraction that will emit photons in a given time period fit the temperature of the material, and it will emit according to the Planck function and absorb according to incident radiation and do both according to the same absorption/emission spectrum. Here is missing the thermal flux that the surface yields to the atmosphere by conduction and as sensible heat which can leave the atmosphere only once the KE of the colliding molecules has been transformed to radiative energy within the isothermal regions that allow the phase transition from the non-excited to excited state and so the photons emission. Just a point. Why do you continue to argue that all the thermo kinetics is founded on the radiative transfer, completely omitting the conduction and, over all, the convection, or leaving them a very marginal role? As far as I know, the heat output of a column radiator for room heating plan has the ratio radiative-heat/convective-heat equal about to 1/3, i.e., the convective effect is the 300% of the radiative one. Then neglecting the convection would be very hazardous and non-real.
  29. ClimateWatcher at 02:22 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    #19 What peer reviewed journal has 'Tamino' published this in? Why do you post a chart that does not represent measurement?
  30. ClimateWatcher at 02:19 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    CRU and GISS use the same input data set which does not cover the quarter of the globe which is land surface, much less the globe. The chart more accurately would be labeled: CRU - doesn't extrapolate over large unmeasured areas such as the Arctic, Antarctica, and Africa. GISS - extrapolates observations as distant as 1200 kilometers. This extrapolation probably doesn't matter much in the longer term, though in the shorter term ( a few decades ), the large smoothing radius of extrapolation tends to exaggerate whatever anomalous trend exists at the periphery of the large unmeasured areas. For example, in the early twentieth century warming, the GISS trend was less than the CRU trend by about the same amount that the recent GISS trend exceeds the CRU trend.
  31. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    It turns out that the industry whose business depends on understanding the risk of extreme weather events is very worried about climate change: Insurance industry facing a climate of fear
  32. Lessons from Past Climate Predictions: Don Easterbrook
    While I disagree with Don's projection, would it not be fairer to him to post his projections with error bars included? Once his projections leave the 95% confidence interval mark when compared to what we've seen so far, then we can say he is (almost certainly) wrong. Until then, he's only probably wrong.
  33. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Norman @83, an earthquake of a given strength will lose strength as it propagates away from the epicenter. Consequently a small magnitude 5.5 quake, which is strong enough to do significant damage in a particular area will be felt as a magnitude 4 quake, or less, just a few miles away. Now consider this map of faults just north of Los Angeles: A small quake on the Simi-Santa Rosa fault zone, Camarillo-Santa Rosa section fault (98b) might well not cause any damage in Thousand Oaks or Oxnard ten or twenty years ago, but cause damage now because of expansion of the urban fringe. In this it is no different from a small tornado near an urban centre in the midwest. Because California, like most earthquake prone regions, is netted with faults, possible epicenters for quakes can be found virtually anywhere in the state. Indeed, they are found everywhere in the state on a daily basis (see map above). Therefore it is likely that small quakes which are large enough to do damage will most often occur in rural areas or just outside the surburban fringe. The expansion of the suburbs into rural areas will increase the risk of a an earthquake hazard becoming an earthquake disaster in exactly the same way that expansion of cities will increase the risk that a weather related hazard will become a weather related disaster. The map above shows the earthquakes in California in the past week. None were above 3 on the Richter scale, but as you can see they are more or less randomly distributed along the major fault lines. All the major fault lines have their own cloud of small fault lines (as shown in the first map) increasing the distribution of potential earthquake hazards. You think there is an important distinction only because you have in your mind that an Earthquake is a big thing hitting a large region. Of course, the damaging region of most earthquakes is in fact small, but you typically think of the big newsworthy quakes. In contrast your idea of a weather related disaster is just a single thunderstorm or twister. In fact, for statistical purposes it is a weather front, or a tornado outbreak; so while a big earthquake is pretty much guaranteed to damage nearby cities, a large weather related disaster is very likely to hit multiple states, or even countries.
  34. Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    30 - CBDunkerson. Sure My post was a glib 'throwaway' but what I've been contemplating is the relation between Carter's behaviour and that analysed in the chapter referred to in this post.
  35. New Zealand Snow No Show = No Jobs
    apirateloksat50, notice the two to three month difference in time of year the two photos were taken. Ponder how much snow can melt in that time frame.
  36. A journey into the weird and wacky world of climate change denial
    Bern (#8), I agree. Though, sometimes it is a chicken-egg scenario; if you are comfortable hearing what the channel saying, you tend to watch it more. There was an interesting poll study about the percentage of people who regularly watched/listened to specific channels and their belief in climate change. Something like 60% of Fox daily viewers did not believe there is a consensus among scientists, and only ~13% of NPR listeners felt the same way. CNN was somewhere in the middle. Related to "The false, the confused and the mendacious: how the media gets it wrong on climate change": Misinformation and the 2010 Election: A Study of the US Electorate page 21
  37. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Badgersouth I posted this information previously and thought I would repost for you. Am I a "denier" or is the evidence still lacking to make a link with Global Warming causing more extreme weather. Texas Droughts. I need good solid evidence. A list of weather extremes in 2010 would not be enough unless the list was embedded in Historical data showing that last year's extremes were way beyond the normal for extremes that occur every year.
  38. Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    Sorry les, I should clarify: I was proceeding from the hypothetical that Carter believed his claims about the CRU were true... in such a case he'd be using data he 'knew' to be fraudulent to advance an argument about recent warming. Stepping away from the hypothetical... yes objectively both of Carter's articles were clearly examples of journalistic malfeasance (i.e. reporting things which are obviously false). It's just that if we 'give him the benefit of the doubt', that he believed what he wrote in the 'Kill the IPCC' article, then in the 'An Inconvenient Fallacy' article he deliberately based his 'scientific' argument on 'faked' data.
  39. Eric the Red at 01:31 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    Human Arctic warming was amplified in the early part of the 20th century also. http://www.joelschwartz.com/pdfs/Chylek.pdf http://polarmet.osu.edu/PolarMet/PMGFulldocs/box_yang_jc_2009.pdf
  40. apiratelooksat50 at 01:28 AM on 29 June 2011
    New Zealand Snow No Show = No Jobs
    And, on the other hand on the other side of the globe we have the opposite. Do they cancel out? :) Deep snow delaying opening of sunrise area in Mount Ranier National Park
  41. Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    It's worth reading John's entire article. The 'cooling since 1998' claim was just one of five so-called "facts" put forth by Carter in the article which were all either half truths or outright lies.
  42. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Badgersouth @ 81 If you want go to my post 33. It has a link to NOAA sight for Global Weather extremes on a monthly basis. Start looking at the different years and then demonstrate why you believe 2010 extremes were more extreme than other years. Is the evidence there, that first 2010 is really that extreme and also that the extremes are linked to global warming (as I have asked in numerous posts...what are the specific mechanisms that have been altered by global warming that would cause exterme weahter in 2010?)
  43. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Tom Curtis @78 "What is more, large weather related hazards, such as a tornado outbreak, are counted as just one disaster even though they may spawn many thousands of thunderstorms and hundreds of individual tornadoes." Why do would they do this? If Omaha got hit the same day as Huntsville, Alabama these would not be counted as seperate disasters? On the Earthquakes. The larger disaster causing earthquakes are small in number. I am sending two links. One with Earthquake number (global) and the other is the level they become disasters. Global Earthquakes last 10 years. Earthquake damage chart. In order for Earthquakes to cause more disasters, a growing population would have to migrate to places where noone is currently living yet prone to earthquakes. If they migrated to already populated areas (as they do) then an earthquake large enough to cause a disaster will not be effected by population growth. The number of targets is not increasing as is with population in storm areas or on flood plains. I am hoping that makes sense to you.
  44. Humanracesurvival at 01:08 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    Related National Security Implications: Key climate denier funded by big #oil, #coal for decade, plotted to take down #IPCC
  45. 2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
    Camburn @ 71 Here is a link from February discussing the spring runoff and plans. Gavin's point was releasing 21,000 cfs durning winter. Army Corp Winter plans for Missouri River.
  46. Humanracesurvival at 00:59 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    @ Eric the Red The warming for most is very present in the arctic. Might make this point as well. The warming of the Arctic, due to climate change, has been twice as high as the world average since 1980. Surface air temperatures in the Arctic since 2005 have been higher than for any five‐ year period since measurements began around 1880. Arctic summer temperatures have been higher in the past few decades than at any time in the past 2000 years. Link Summer snowfall decreases in Arctic because it changes to rain AGWObserver
  47. Humanracesurvival at 00:55 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    Vote for this article @ reddit National Security Implication, Climate Denial: Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
  48. Eric the Red at 00:54 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    Long term, both GISS and CRU show the same linear trend of 0.6C / century (computed from 1880-present), even though they have different increases and decreases in the mid-century region which may or may not be cyclical in nature. On an annual basis, all the indices were above their long-term trend lines. On a monthly basis, CRU fell below its long-term trendline in Dec. - likely start of the La Nina impact on temperatures, and has been below the long term average for 4 of the last 5 months (through April, 2011). Yes, CRU does not cover the Arctic. On the flip side, its dataset is more consistent over the measurement period. The differences are not great. In the long run, which of these years, 1998, 2005, or 2010, is the hottest, will get lost in the noise.
  49. Humanracesurvival at 00:54 AM on 29 June 2011
    Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies
    National Security Implication, Climate Denial: Climate half-truths turn out to be whole lies http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ibbzw/national_security_implication_climate_denial/
  50. Dikran Marsupial at 00:34 AM on 29 June 2011
    Uncertainty in Global Warming Science
    Ken Lambert The same applies to outbound fluxes. Also, as I pointed out, the same is true for CO2 radiative forcing. Does CO2 being above its long term equilibrium value cause indefinitely increasing temperatures? No, but the integral is similarly "the total energy under the CO2 radiative forcing curve between times t1 and t2".

Prev  1611  1612  1613  1614  1615  1616  1617  1618  1619  1620  1621  1622  1623  1624  1625  1626  Next



The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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