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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 98501 to 98550:

  1. Slovak translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    Hi Matt, well, there are cca. 5 000 000 Slovak people and many of them do not speak english. (AFAIK) And also every person who knows more about climate is useful, I think. But I agree absolutely with you that it might not be the most productive way to reduce emissions, but maybe it is necessary. China - at the per capita basis is still (though rising dramatically) lower than Slovakia, much less than US.... India is even less... Nobody said that knowing about global warming will reduce CO2. One person can only do what he/she can. And see the comment above :-)
  2. Slovak translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    #1 CIA World Factbook: 5,470,306 (July 2010 est.) - 90%+ of them will have problems with English texts of this complexity; I do not know the translator whose work you so splendidly appreciated and maybe this is the reason that I see really red and cannot resist an ad hominem attack: how many foreign languages do you know in which you can read a material like this?
  3. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Heraclitus, NASA now have a research programme looking at airborne wind energy: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=39102541# The potential is enormous, capacity factors high and embodied emissions low. It's a strong contender for being a hugely disruptive technology. In my view this area should get a massive R&D injection quick sharp.
  4. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 00:22 AM on 15 January 2011
    Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    @ Mike G As we can see and the various works - showing a different response of corals to temperature and reduce the alkalinity of water - I have presented only saying that the corals “will cope”. This is a "cherry picking", but only because they lacked the cited work - by me - above. Are coral reefs "will cope"? The worst of the corals will be very close to the pole (there are only 1-2 species of reef-building a whole), but: Lough and Barnes, 2000., comparison the two 20-year periods 1903-1922 and 1979-1998: "the SST-associated increase in calcification is estimated to be less than 5% in the northern GBR, ~12% in the central GBR, ~20% in the southern GBR and to increase dramatically (up to ~50%) to the south of the GBR." Is today's coral species survived similar changes in pH of the oceans - and temperature - as it is today? CO2 emissions causing ocean acidification to progress at unprecedented rate, National Research Council US: “Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the average pH of ocean surface waters has decreased approximately 0.1 unit -- from about 8.2 to 8.1 -- making them more acidic. Models project an additional 0.2 to 0.3 drop by the end of the century. This rate of change exceeds any known to have occurred in hundreds of thousands of years, the report says.” “The results showed decreases in shell and skeletal growth in a range of marine organisms, including reef-building corals, commercially important mollusks such as oysters and mussels, and several types of plankton at the base of marine food webs.” It is true that we have only regional (but based on a consistent method of research) work in identifying variation in the pH of the oceans during the Last Glacial Period and the Holocene, but probably they may be representative for the whole ocean. Abrupt sea surface pH change at the end of the Younger Dryas in the central sub-equatorial Pacific inferred from boron isotope abundance in corals (Porites), Douville et al., 2010.: “Modern coral 11B values and the reconstructed sea surface pH values for different Pacific areas match the measured pH expressed on the Sea Water Scale and confirm the calculation parameters that were previously determined by laboratory calibration exercises. Most ancient sea surface pH reconstructions near Marquesas are higher than modern values.” ... but: “This last finding provides further evidence of the marked changes to the water mass pH and temperature properties in the equatorial Pacific at the Younger Dryas- Holocene transition and the strong impact of oceanic dynamic on the atmospheric CO2 content.” “An abrupt pH drop to 8.05 [-0,2 pH - unit] was observed at the end of the Younger Dryas around 11.5 kyr BP.” I recommend Figure 6 - circa 8.1 pH was the case 2 and 6 thousand years ago. In paper Instability of seawater pH in the South China Sea during the mid-late Holocene : Evidence from boron isotopic composition of corals, Liu et al., 2009. On this figure, we see a rapid decrease in pH of seawater circa 4,000 years ago and a pH lower than today - 6 thousand years ago. The Impact of Climate Change on the World’s Marine Ecosystems, Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno, 2010.: There is a sentence like this: “Marine ecosystems are centrally important to the biology of the planet, yet a comprehensive understanding of how anthropogenic climate change is affecting them has been poorly developed.” ... but also a this sentence: “Recent studies indicate that rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation.”
  5. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    #8: "Tell us something we didn't know" Thanks, I take it from this remark that you are in agreement with faster than reported warming. You don't have to look far, even here on SkS, to find those who do not agree -- so 'something we didn't know' depends on what you mean by 'we'. "Thought is long from proof." Ah, that must be the sound of moving goalposts. If you have issues with either a solar cause for the early 20th century warming or the aerosol cause for mid-century cooling, see the relevant SkS posts. The rest of your last paragraph is a mass of confusion: for example, what's a 'semi-closed system'? Boil it down to the final 'world just doesn't seem to like to stay the same,' which is just another version of 'we don't know' or 'we can't know' or the usual ascientific tripe. Try harder next time. #9: JMurphy, input boxes? Don't see 'em here in Firefox.
  6. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    I can see three input boxes within the post, which cannot be clicked on or anything, and with greyed-out scroll bars. Is there meant to be anything in them, or is it just me and my computer/browser ? cruzn246, rather than constantly posting what you believe and don't believe, why not actually provide some data, evidence (whatever) so everyone can test the veracity of those beliefs ?
  7. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    For those of you who like a project this site will help you figure out how to lower your bills via - Solar, Wind, thermal, bio fuel etc. http://www.builditsolar.com/ Have a look at some of the big projects - I am on large cansolair build number 2 similar to this http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/GregCanCol/GregCanCo.htm and will be doing a hot water system this year ready for next winter very similar to this http://www.krystofiak.com/solar/intro.html and this http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/24by8Collector.htm For those who have doubts about heating from the sun try here http://www.youtube.com/user/richallenmusic#p/u/23/2Cm-cbOWvSs These systems work, they save you large amounts of money on your bills, and more to the point by actively participating in this you are actively reducing you carbon footprint. This is one of those rare hobbies that will save you money rather than cost you a fortune and can involve the whole family, can be great fun to build, and be a very effective way of teaching your children about alternative energy sources and their associated benefits and how to use them.
  8. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    So what. Tell us something we didn't know. Here is the part that makes me wonder. "We know that early 20th century warming, thought to be largely driven by increasing solar irradiance, was followed by a mid-century cooling episode thought to be due to increasing aerosols." Thought is long from proof. We are still fuzzy on drivers and their net effects historically and presently. Anyone who says they have that all figured out is full of hooey. By this you would almost think that solar irradiance had to increase to have a warm-up. Not true. In a semi closed system, like we are in, warming or cooling can occur with a relatively steady solar irradiance. About the only thing that is unlikely during fairly steady solar times is steady temps. This world just doesn't seem to like to stay the same temp for long.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] For someone studying climate science you demonstrate little command of the subject in your numerous postings here at Skeptical Science. Please be a positive resource to this discussion by providing links to peer-reviewed sources which support your position, rather than the dismissive handwaving which you do currently. Thanks!
  9. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Ask the Danish what happens when you rely on wind power.
  10. The Queensland floods
    Ken, hope things are starting to get a bit cleaner for you now. Just a management question. Will businesses get priority for electrical certification to reconnect? I'd hope so, but it'd be nice to be sure.
  11. Eric (skeptic) at 23:57 PM on 14 January 2011
    The Queensland floods
    Tom Curtis, an apples to apples comparison would be a wide area of proxies to a wide area of measurements (the BOM area is a bit small). Bob Tisdale's site had this chart http://i55.tinypic.com/2udz7yh.jpg showing about a 0.5 C rise which seems to agree with the BOM data. The AGW explanation is not in question here, just whether the variation is unprecedented. Here's a link to a (perhaps) better paleo proxy temperature study. Still only a few sampling locations, but they are spread out and their broader trends are comparable. Excel is also provided, here's the study http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7004/full/nature02903.html Since there is virtually no modern data in this study, it cannot be used to compare modern changes, only past changes. It shows about 0.4C of rise and fall (figure 3b) from 2k ybp to a peak at 1k to preindustrial where the chart ends. There's not as much support for my "meme" here, but I need to find studies with more collection points, better resolution and modern data to be more certain.
  12. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    The Ville, thanks for those examples. Here we already have some airconditioning units set to respond to remote adjustment to temperature when the grid is overloading. My view is that we already have the technology to allow airconditioning, water heating, refrigerators and freezers, industrial lighting - and we will soon have carparks fitted with plugin for electric cars - to be remotely switched on or off, or up/down depending on the grid situation. Instead of those German wind generating systems having to pay people to leave lights on at night when the wind is *really* blowing, we could have all such units built (or retrofitted) to feed into the grid if possible (cars) and to use up surplus generation where necessary or reduce demand by adjusting temperature settings or turning units on or off on a rotating basis. Once we change the engineering focus to the grid away from the idea of central supply and passive distribution, a whole lot of new approaches will follow quite naturally.
  13. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Hey, nice post, muoncounter. (And thanks for the links to my older posts....)
  14. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Just noticed a mistake in my last post: "3. One must remember that the point is to cut emissions! Without the wind turbines, the times when they are not spinning is time when coal and gas would be needed..." I meant that if the turbines weren't in place, the times that they would have been operating, require coal or gas. The default has been largely been coal and gas, wind turbines at the current small scale replace some of that capacity, hence cut emissions. The fact that when wind doesn't blow, coal and gas are used, is a red herring because coal and gas would have been the default. The issue changes when higher levels of wind is used and that is where new ideas and technology come in.
  15. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    great metodology and nice presentation with arguments. I had to register just to congrad.
  16. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Oh my goodness where do you start?? 1. At the AGU last year someone did present some research that showed that some crops benefited from wind turbines placed in the same fields. 2. Regarding the UK and cold weather, if you take a look at the National Grid report about the recent cold spell. Out of the many weeks that we had snow and freezing conditions, it was only on 2 or 3 days that zero wind conditions caused a problem. In fact about three nuclear power plants were not contributing either. On top of that, oil and hydro also underperformed. 3. One must remember that the point is to cut emissions! Without the wind turbines, the times when they are not spinning is time when coal and gas would be needed, so emissions for that capacity would shoot up from double figure emissions (30 or so gCO2/KWh) to triple figure emissions (900 gCO2/KWh) if the wind turbines were not in place. Whilst wind represents a small part of the mix, emissions are cut and they don't represent an issue, the issue changes when wind represents a larger proportion of the mix and traditional power stations will have to fill in gaps rather. That requires new thinking and changes to the grid system. 4. One of the primary issues is load balancing of the grid. You do this by monitoring the frequency and either adjust the generator end or you adjust the consumer end, so that you get a steady 50hz. Traditionally because fossil fuel power plants have been designed to run constantly 24/7 it has been necessary for electricity companies to push consumers to buy products that soak up that generation capacity, then if consumer demand changed, massive power stations would be taken off or put online. That model is changing and now consumer products will need to participate in the balancing game. As an example there are at least two projects in the UK that are developing fridges that can monitor the grid frequency and take themselves on and offline depending on the situation. True Energy in Wales is is using vaccine refigeration technology to develop domestic/commercial fridges that can keep your food cool without power for 10 days. 5. Then of course their is the super grids that are being developed to hook up European nations. This is another way to achieve load balancing and shifting energy around. 6. There is also a smart grid project in the UK that is testing some of this technology. There is an enormous amount research and product development going on and the likes of Paul Hudson hasn't a real clue about the engineering.
  17. The Queensland floods
    This is my first time to your site, and I am a little overwhelmed with all the information. Most important things first - it's good that you and your family are safe. There are so many tragic stories about loss of life. My home on the Hawkesbury River (NSW) inundated in the '78 flood - all safe but still the memory leaves me a little too empathic with flood victims. I do have a question about climate change and the Queensland floods. With so much water over such a large area, can this have any immediate or lasting effect on climate?
  18. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    It would be interesting to see this globally, as a layer on google maps / earth. Good visualisation method.
  19. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    That somewhat seemingly skeptical weather bloke at the BBC, Paul, Hudson, has recently posted showing that; "the intense cold has gone hand in hand with periods of little or no wind. ... With much of the country experiencing very little wind, both onshore and offshore, wind turbines were largely inactive. This means that there would have to be some power stations - using coal or gas, since nuclear power output can't be increased at short notice - that simply exist as a stand-by facility, in case the wind doesn't blow. And that's a very expensive way of producing electricity. ... Professor Mike Lockwood at Reading University thinks that the UK could indeed experience colder winters on average, compared with the last few decades because of the sun's low activity. This would lead to a higher frequency of 'blocking' weather patterns leading to less frequent windy conditions than would normally be expected if one looks at climatological averages - suggesting we would have to continue to rely on coal and gas fired power generation well into the future - and possibly more than is currently envisaged." http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/01/coal-takes-the-strainagain.shtml
  20. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    A significant part of the rapid Northern Hemisphere warming is the high proportion of land ot ocean in the NH, mostly due to the Asian land mass. This accentuates the warming trend which is stronger towards the poles in any event, and even stronger in the arctic because of summer ice melt and albedo effects. Conversely, the relative lack of land in the Southern Hemisphere below 23.6 degrees south relative to the tropics hides the increased warming trend in southern regions. Unique circumstances in Antarctica also limit the warming trend, further weakeing the Southern Hemisphere trend so that it is approximately equal to that of the tropics. It would be interesting to see a graph of the NH, Tropics, and SH land only temperature anomalies by latitude; and also the equivalent ocean only anomalies, so that this distortion could be removed.
  21. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Bit of an eye-opener that. I was aware of the Arctic warming extremely fast, but not the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
  22. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    HR - There is obviously some debate in the scientific community about the issue of coral reef calcification That's one way of putting it, not very accurate though. The calcification predictions made in McNeil 2004 aren't actually occurring. Doesn't that dent your confidence in their predictions?. Aside from all the other faulty assumptions in their paper?. Note the links provided by Mike G @ 34. This from De'ath 2009. A 14% calcification decline in the Great Barrier Reef since 1990. Similar results in South-East Asia, the Caribbean and a whopping 50% decline in the cooler water reefs of Bermuda. What debate?.
  23. Slovak translation of The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism
    It is interesting that it is available in so many languages, but I keep on thinking: of all the people who have to be convinced of the urgent need for action, how many of them speak Slovak? And of those, how many do not already read English? So it seems to me that translating into Slovak is not very productive. It is Chinese and the Indian languages where we need it. And perhaps Russian, too, since Putin is so very determined to pump as much oil and gas as he can and get the best price for it. After all, it was the Chinese and Indians who sabotaged the Copenhagen conference; they would have hesitated to do this if the facts about global warming were better known among their populations. Unless, of course, all the web sites bearing it were blocked by "the Great Firewall of China".
  24. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    I keep reminding people that if we don't recover soon from the current recession, we will soon be hit by the economic shock due to global warming, so that we will never recover. I can't tell if anyone is really getting the point, though.
  25. Northern hemisphere warming rates: More than you may have heard
    Excellent post, which I will read in more detail later. A little nit: "begging the question" (para 8) is a logical fallacy meaning to assume what you are trying to prove. It is the listener or reader who is bieng "begged". The phrase is now so often used in the sense of "inviting the question" that it is rarely queried. Begging the Question
  26. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    Apologies Albatross for mixing up denier and skeptic but it makes little difference. There is obviously some debate in the scientific community about the issue of coral reef calcification and climate change. The debate is not the result of skeptics mis-information. Address that issue rather than making vague claims about posts here. With regard to you're personnal observation about Mauritius in 2001. There's a report here covering the period you were there. They seem to rule out ocean changes associated with climate change. In the worst declining study area they clearly blame the pressure of tourism. http://www.unuftp.is/static/fellows/document/ravi05aprf.pdf "The patterns in the reef community structure could not be linked to any of the recorded environmental parameters (sea surface temperature, salinity, pH and dissolved oxygen). It is postulated that these parameters were not the appropriate indicators for monitoring the observed changes in the coral reefs." "In recent years, the nature of the coastal activities in this area has shifted from an agro-industrial area in the past to presently hosting the main tourism related developments in the southern part of the island......This reef was previously reported as being rich and healthy and has been badly damaged by algae and cyanobacteria from very recent nutrient inputs to the coastal waters.....Since sugar cane cultivation on the nearby hill slopes is not new, the source of nutrients is from land alterations during the development and most likely from leakages from septic systems of new hotel developments" ( -edit- )
    Moderator Response: (Daniel Bailey) Cease making things personal.
  27. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    A review of wind energy technologies Volume 11, Issue 6, August 2007, Pages 1117-1145 doi:10.1016/j.rser.2005.08.004 free copy: http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/refs/wind/WindReview.pdf provides a lot of useful background facts
  28. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    Albatross - They almost had me convinced Apologies for that. Maybe I didn't stress the global decline of coral strongly enough?. I had planned to have two other rebuttals ready to go, to address the common coral myths, but haven't quite got there. And as far as sea urchin are concerned, although tolerant of lower pH, acidification will impact many of them too at some point if we continue to acidify the oceans. The sea is basically an organic soup of sperm, eggs and juvenile life stages of marine organisms. It's at this stage that many are vulnerable. Sea urchin too. The overall view is that they will be impacted later rather than sooner under business-as-usual scenarios. I understand they are not at immediate risk though, unlike coral. A recent metadata analysis here: Impact of near-future ocean acidification on echinoderms - Dupont 2010 How many skeptics eat sea urchin & starfish I wonder?.
  29. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    Anyone fancy inviting Prof. MacKay to respond to the remarks about Without Hot Air?
  30. The Queensland floods
    Eric @62, to illustrate the point about averaging, here are the averages of the three data series from your second link for the first twenty terms: -0.37, -0.2, -.43, -1.3, -0.9, -0.6, 0.23, -0.23, 0.02, 0.07, 0.02, 0.6, 0.3, 0.51, 0.27, 0.6, 0.2, 0.07, 0.63, -0.1. The average used the same time step as the data for the Sargasso sea, averaging with the nearest value in time for the other series, or if no close value was available, with the intercept of the plot of the other data series. (Values judged by eyeball and calculated in my head.) The averaged values vary between -0.9 and 0.63, a range of 1.53. Over the same twenty time intervals, the values for the Sargasso Sea vary between -1 to 1.5, a range of 2.5. The averaged values, in other words exhibit only 60% of the variability of the individual data series. This reduction in variability is a well known property of multiple series, which is why temperature variability over multiple locations is not meaningfully compared as to variability with single sites as you have done. Of course, the more data points used in an average, the less the variability that survives. In this context, it is therefore relevant to list the data sources behind the BOM's SST product: "Data Acknowledgments The Bureau of Meteorology gratefully acknowledge the following institutions and data products that have been used to develop the system: BLUElink project partners - CSIRO and RAN Ocean General Circulation Model: Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Modular Ocean Model version4p0d Bathymetry: USNavy, US Navy 2 minute global bathymetry NOAA, General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans, 1 minute global bathymetry Geoscience Australia, 1km regional bathymetry Satellite remote sensing: NASA and CNES: Jason-1, IGDR ESA, Envisat, IGDR NOAA, AMSR-E Real-time in situ observations: These are data made freely available from a large number of sources, through mechanisms such as the Global Telecommunications System of the World Meteorological Organization. For BLUElink they include specifically observations made by: Autonomous profiling floats (Argo) Expendable bathythermograph (XBT) Conductivity Temperature Depth (CTD) TAO/TRITON array" Clearly we should expect far less variability in the BOM's SST average than in data from a single location (or just three locations), and finding that reduced variability proves nothing. Tackled differently, there is clearly more variability in the individual years (range of 1.2 degrees) than in the decadal trend (range of 0.7 degrees) in the chart above, again indicating the effects of taking an average. If we look at more detailed data, say by lookiing at the the decadal trend for individual regions, we see a variability range of up to 2 degrees in some regions, such as the Gulf of Carpentaria. (We also see that the increase in SST in Qld waters has been significantly greater than that in Australian waters generaly.) I know you want to doggedly repeat a meme you have found comforting, but that is no substituted for analysis. Analysis shows the data you provide to approximately follow a pattern of warming to the peak at the MWP, then cool to a minimum at the LIA, and then warm again. If extended it would no doubt show the current peak at around about, or higher than that of the MWP. Those broad fluctuations of temperature, and hence energy content of the ocean/atmosphere system need an explanation, and as noted above, no non-anthropogenic explanation of the recent warming can be found that is consistent with the data - and not for the lack of trying. A significant proportion of modern climate scientists initially backed a different horse; but were dragged reluctantly to the IPCC position by shere force of data. No amount of prattling on about variability can obviate this fact.
  31. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    Mike G @ 43 - Good catch, my bad. I didn't realize Mfripp was referring to the graphic I posted. And I second Phillipe's comment, your knowledgeable contributions are greatly appreciated.
  32. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    @gc: Brave New Climate is heavily biased towards nuclear power. Please don't turn this into a "nuclear is the only solution" thread. I mean, you don't even agree with AGW theory, so your only reason to bring this up seems to be to stir up controversy.
  33. gallopingcamel at 17:30 PM on 14 January 2011
    What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    "Brave New Climate" is an excellent source of information on energy issues. Here is a link on wind power: http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/01/wind-power-emissions-counter/
  34. What is the Potential of Wind Power?
    I'm still holding out for Kitegen - accesses the much stronger and more reliable high altitude winds. http://cleantechnica.com/2010/10/16/astounding-eroei-of-kitegen-ready-to-test/ Can anyone tell me if there is any future in this? Seems it would be competing with planes for airspace (so win-win then!)
  35. The Queensland floods
    Tom #58. I agree completely. You've taken my provision of enough scientific rope, and coiled it nicely on the deck, pending it's need for use some other time. The risk is of course that someone else will pick up your neat pile, tie it into a noose and slip.
  36. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    KR, When the spectral characteristics of the Earth's emitted power spectrum are examined from space, there are spectral gaps at all of the absorption/emission wavelengths. We can explain this as the power passing through the transparent regions of the atmosphere. Based on the atmospheric transmittance, not enough power passes through from the surface and cloud tops into space, in fact, only about 40% of the required power passes through and into space through this window. Now the question for you is if the 60% of the missing power was emitted from GHG's in the absorption bands, which are the only places in the spectrum they emit, why are there absorption gaps in the measured spectrum? You must agree that the missing power is still passing through the transparent regions, just not originating from the surface or cloud tops. Where else can it originate from but the atmosphere itself?
  37. Philippe Chantreau at 16:25 PM on 14 January 2011
    Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    Mike G your knowledge of coral and reef biology has proved quite helpful on this thread, as have the references you put forth. Thanks for your valuable contribution.
  38. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    KR, I never said N2 or O2 absorbs or emits narrow band IR. However, O2 gas and N2 gas emit a broad band Planck spectrum of energy dependent on it's temperature. Are you trying to tell me that a gravitationally bound ball of N2 and O2 gas at some temperature T will remain at that temperature forever? Just because there's a ball of rock in the center doesn't change anything.
  39. citizenschallenge at 16:24 PM on 14 January 2011
    The Queensland floods
    John, I'm coming in on this late, but want to share my relief that you and yours are OK, while sympathizing with all who weren't so lucky. I've spent hours reviewing various skeptic sites today, especially Morano's fraud - it makes me want to scream. How do they manage to keep up their glib fraud?
  40. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    co2isnotevil - Um, N2 and O2 do not emit in the IR; their emissivity is extremely low at surface and atmospheric temperatures, and they are essentially not factors in infrared blackbody (BB) radiation in the climate system. That's a red herring. The radiation seen at top of atmosphere is the surface radiation (BB spectra near 1.0 emissivity), clouds, and greenhouse gases. Not N2 or O2. If you disagree, please show the N2 and O2 emissive spectra in the IR. What I've seen shows no such IR emission from diatomic gases.
  41. The Physical Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Absorption
    hfranzen, Your energy balance on page 19 is relatively close to mine as discussed here. Your 302 W/m^2 of total absorption is close to my 292 W/m^2 and it is generally assumed that CO2 is about 1/3 (I calculate it as about 31%), which is why your 107.6 W/m^2 for CO2 alone may seem reasonable. However, my CO2 only absorption is for the clear sky, while the composite absorption (your 300 and my 292) is the cloud percentage weighted clear sky and cloudy sky absorption. One other point is the run I did for the earlier data was not at the average surface temperature, but the percentages are all correct, so the actual power absorbed is the percentage times your emitted surface power. Reading more of your paper, on page 24, you don't acknowledge that most of the power emitted by the atmosphere is not by greenhouse gas emissions, but is the BB radiation emitted by the rest of the atmosphere which has been warmed by GHG's. If you have any doubt that a heated gas emits BB radiation, consider that the photons from the Sun are BB radiation of the heated Hydrogen in the upper layers of it's atmosphere. Consider that we can measure the temperature of interstellar gas clouds by observing them in the IR. The picture on page 32 makes no sense. Is it CO2 absorption for Venus or something? The composite absorption of the Earth looks more like this. The colors indicate which gas is most responsible for each wavelength bucket. The image is shrunk a lot, so open it for a high resolution view. The wave;ength resolution I've used is a logarithmic scale of about 26K buckets per decade with calculations performed over 4 decades from .1u to 1000u which is orders of magnitude finer than the spectral resolution you are using. I've also found that large wavelength buckets are not very accurate. At this point it seems that you have 11 wavelength buckets spread between 9 and 19 microns, while my analysis covers over 100K logarithmic wavelength buckets between .1u and 1000u, moreover; my analysis with HITRAN data is far more accurate than yours using the Burch et all CO2 data. Whether or not your math is correct, which as far as I can tell looks OK, I know that the limited data you are starting from is insufficient to establish what you're trying to show.
  42. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    #39 Off the bat I have to admit that I'm not familiar with the research on the effects of warming or acidification on sea urchins, but we'll assume your recollection is good since it doesn't really change the answer of how that would affect reefs. The simple answer is "it depends." Some species of urchins are important grazers that prevent corals from being out-competed by algae. Their presence in sufficient numbers can increase coral cover by ensuring coral larvae have a clear place to settle. However, overabundance may also slightly reduce coral recruitment since they end up scraping off the coral larvae along with the algae they're eating. Other urchins like Echinometra tend to have a negative impact on coral cover for a couple of reasons. One is that they're basically the reef's bulldozers. They eat almost everything in their path including coral larvae and coralline algae. Coralline algae are important because they acts as a settlement cue for corals. The latter group of urchins are also important because they bore into the structure of the reef itself, and are one of the most important bio-eroders on the reef. In a world where the growth rate of the reef is reduced, a concurrent increase in erosion due to rock-boring urchins would hasten the transition to a "dead" reef- which basically just means that the corals don't grow fast enough to keep up with erosion. So depending on which species benefit more from acidification/temp change and how much they benefit, the impact could probably go either way.
  43. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    @mfripp The map in #5 isn't a map of coral stress. In fact, there are no coral reefs in large parts of the highlighted watch areas- e.g. most of the area between Australia and Madagascar or below about 25S. The map is just a model estimate of where conditions are likely to cause bleaching based on parameters like sea surface temperature anomalies. Some of the more sophisticated models also take wind and cloud cover into account, though I'm not sure if this particular one does. There's no latitudinal pattern to the map because in essence it's a map of cumulative SST anomalies, which don't necessarily increase towards the equator.
  44. Coral: life's a bleach... and then you die
    @HR: "I understand you don't like that but it doesn't make him a denier." Enough with the weasel words. You should apologize to Albatross. That would be the classy thing to do.
  45. Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    Putting aside whether apirate's interpretation of the graph is defensible, I think his question is somewhat silly. "Intelligent and educated" people routinely believe bizarre things on the basis of little or no evidence. What people need, generally speaking, is a self-reflexive stance that allows them some critical distance from their ego, political assumptions and so forth. Without that stance, and the humility that tends to accompany it, intelligent and educated people are as prone as anyone to make fools of themselves. Maybe more so. An educated and intelligent person might well look at this chart and doubt AGW. But a really intelligent, really educated person would then go on to consider whether it's plausible that thousands of scientists who have drawn the opposite conclusion are misreading the chart. That kind of self-questioning is what tends to be missing from the "skeptical" outlook, in my experience. Particularly when assessing a field that's not your own, the truly intelligent and educated approach is to assume that the experts in that field know a lot more about it than you do. And that if you propose to challenge them on their own turf, you need to start by gaining the same level of knowledge. There are very few "skeptics" on this site I'd describe as stupid or uneducated. Willful ignorance is a different matter entirely, and it's perfectly compatible with intelligence and education. In other words, I really don't understand what apirate is hoping to accomplish with this line of argument.
  46. actually thoughtful at 14:10 PM on 14 January 2011
    Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    Apirate@116 - I can understand why thinking people doubt - until they examine the evidence! I started out "believing" in AGW - after all, scientists who dedicated their careers and lives to this research (for little pay - even now) had come to this conclusion - no upside for them. Then I began to see all the doubt, and I went to sites like The Air Vent and the Blackboard. These are sites were VERY smart people try to pick apart climate theory. I noticed that they focused on one world government, that they thought cap and trade was a bad idea. But when they focused on the science - they tended to support, or find that, using their analysis, warming was misstated by climate scientists by a few percentages (remember the Urban Heat Island issue? they tried to prove that UHI was inflating the data at the Blackboard - they instead found that climate scientists UNDERstated warming by a tenth of a degree or so, because they were too vigilant in correcting urban-influenced sites. So I then began to critically examine the arguments, and I found skeptic arguments, with the possible exception of the missing ocean data, were provably false. So I now know AGW is the correct theory (within the limits of scientific understanding) I have answered your question cheerfully - will you do one favor for me? Express as clearly as you can your strongest reason for doubting climate science (I say climate science because most people don't realize that AGW=climate science - if you understand climate science then you are an "AGW believer"; "pro-AGW" (your term); and you understand AGW.). Once you state it, read the responses you get here (and the explanations provided in the skeptic arguments section, and honor us with either a "I know understand this element and agree with the climate scientists" OR "I still don't agree because X." And then repeat this holistic process with each of your arguments. Most skeptics get to the point of stating their argument, but then they never process it and either state why it explained the matter to their satisfaction, or what information they need to satisfy themselves. It is a complicated issue - but I think anyone (such as myself even) who is not willing to accept what the highly trained professionals tell us at face value is responsible for understanding it on their own. It seems weird to not accept the scientific evidence, but not have nay other theory to support in its stead (I am ruling out denial as a scientific theory...)
  47. Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    apiratelooksat50 - "Can you understand (not agree!) how intelligent, educated people around the world can question the theory of human induced climate change?" Yes, apiratelooksat50, but I cannot agree with them. In one word, "rates". We're warming at 5-6 times the fastest rate ever seen in the historic record, without any of the forcings (orbital inclination, solar variance) that have induced those changes. The only thing that matches current warming is CO2. When I state that I understand why people might not agree, I'm referring to any number of reasons - the feeling that we can't be affecting the globe, anthropocentric "the world was made for us" views, reluctance to change, the "get dem darn revenuers outta my back yard" resistance to large scale social interaction, any number of things. Reasons that I do not consider rational. Strong, yes, rational, no. Given the chart, and an unbiased reading of it, I can only conclude that we've f&%$@^d things up, and we're changing the climate. I don't understand how any other conclusion could be reached unless biased by preconceptions.
  48. Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    There is always something to learn! The effect of volcanic eruptions on the stratosphere, for instance. And the pointlessness of citing a decade-old opinion piece as "evidence" of cooling.
  49. Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    #117: Thanks, but SkS is not my website; I'm just a passenger on this bus. But I look forward to their questions and/or input. #116: What I cannot understand is how a scientifically or mathematically literate person can look at the GISS graph in #105 and not be struck that something very unusual is happening. Said literate person would then begin researching context (perhaps here), look for consistent explanations (and as I believe many have done), find a wealth of evidence that points to AGW or ACC or whatever we are calling it now. The literate person will weigh the evidence and consider the opinions of those with more experience in the field. In that process, the arguments of the so-called skeptics, particularly their reliance on unknown 'natural cycles' will come up short. You say 'given the chart'; I say the GISS graph is just one link in a long chain that must be followed to its logical conclusion. It's not easy, but it is an interesting and very important puzzle.
  50. Could global warming be caused by natural cycles?
    apiratelooksat50 "Given the chart: Can you understand (not agree!) how intelligent, educated people around the world can question the theory of human induced climate change?" No, I can't. If you're going to question the theory, then you need to have a firm, scientific basis for doing so-yet you've failed to provide any basis beyond a strongly held belief. Look again at figures A & B at #105. The warming caused by the Milankovitch cycles occurred over *thousands* of years-equating to an average warming rate of less than +0.02 degrees per decade. The warming which has occurred since 1950 has been at a rate of +0.12 degrees per decade-with no sign of it leveling off. Since 1980, the warming rate has been +0.16 degrees per decade-suggesting that the warming trend is *accelerating*. This is in spite of the fact that the PDO has been trending downwards, & Total Solar Irradiance has fallen at a rate of 0.02 Watts/Meter Squared over that same time period. Not only that, but every *natural* source of warming should be warming the *entire* atmosphere fairly equally. Yet what we're seeing is a warming of the troposphere, but a cooling of the stratosphere-consistent with heat being trapped in the lower atmosphere & failing to get out to space. When you can provide a rational, scientific explanation for these phenomena, I'll be more than happy to listen to them, but so far you've failed to provide any. You learning anything yet?

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