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  2079  2080  2081  2082  2083  2084  2085  2086  2087  2088  2089  2090  2091  2092  2093  2094  Next

Comments 104301 to 104350:

  1. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Dana "Economic impacts of carbon pricing" Hmmm! I thought that discussing the paradign used to assess these impacts would be relevant...Any way It doesn't matter. If you've got a chance, I suggest the following: Daly, H 1997: Beyond growth, the economics of sustainable development Jackson T 2009, Prosperity without Growth: economics for a finite planet
  2. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    The problem, TOP, is that the people are making these decisions based largely on falsehoods. Simple actions like improvements in fuel & energy efficiency will not only reduce CO2 emissions (by as much as 20% or more) but also reduce people's energy & fuel bills. Yet if you even suggest that to most people (especially those who listen to the mainstream press too much) they look at you like you're some kind of *Communist*! As to planting trees, TOP, well that's all well & good but-where do you suggest? Our global population grows in leaps & bounds-& forests are usually the first to go in our desire for living space. When you can convince the Economic Fundamentalists that forests are more important than more population growth, then you'll really have achieved something!
  3. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    One little flaw in all this. What if the people don't want it? I mean, just hypothetically, what if they vote out the politicians who favor this kind of legislation? @renewable guy To move the average temperature down you have to remove carbon, and you have to do it now. Cap and Trade won't do that. Planting trees will.
  4. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Mike - I provided links to the studies and models where possible. Phil263 - your second question is beyond the scope of this discussion. Camburn - by itself, a single country's cap and trade system would not have a significant impact on global temperatures. But we don't act in a vacuum. If the USA enacts serious climate legislation, other countries will follow suit. If we don't, they'll use our inaction as an excuse for their own (i.e. see Australia and Canada).
  5. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn: ******************************************************************* According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree? ****************************************************************** Moving the average earth temperature downward is a win and cap and trade can acheive that. And do so at a profit. When businesses get the economic signal from cap and trade, they will look at their bottom line and look for the way to acheive the carbon goals in the most efficient way. Cap and trade frees up the businesses to acheive the goals in the cheapest, most timely fashion. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085 The site above does a nice job of tieing the financial incentives with reducing carbon emissions.
  6. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Dana Even though you mentioned other variables, GDP IS your headline indicator. I also note that "utility bills" "Gasoline prices" and "household costs" are all sub-variables that will come somewhere under the GDP calculation. What about costs such as: loss of clean air and clean water due to economic activity, loss of species,loss of pristine landscapes such as the Great Barrier Reef.... I know hard to quantify, but real nonetheless! And...you haven't addressed my second objection: IS ongoing economic growth (measured by GDP) sustainable and desirable? Can we keep using non-renewable resources as infinitum? Can we exploit renewable resources below replacement capacity? Reducing our carbon emissions is urgent, but the debate about human economic activities should be far broader.
  7. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn: Cap and trade is about investing our way out of a serious problem. It seems that this 200 billion for the United States for instance in oil imports would be a really good target for the US to work on as well as other countries. Strategic investment while pulling ourselves out of a slump. The government being the stimulus to move in a more self sufficient direction. The market will kick in its stimulus a little too late when we are already at the point of panic. To prepare for the problems down the road eases the magnitude of crisis. For instance cap and trade will accelerate us towards the solution for Peak Oil.
  8. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    I find it odd though, Mike, that some people accept the word of economists as Gospel Truth in matters relating to Privatization & De-regulation; yet they're suddenly not to be trusted the moment they start modeling the potential impacts of CO2 mitigation. For the record, a number of Economists *did* see the recent GFC coming, but their calls for action were largely ignored by a Republican Dominated Congress.
  9. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Mike, that coal is almost certainly going to run out one day-the faster we use it, the faster it will disappear. When it runs out, so too will the jobs & the money. So we have a choice: accept the need to switch to *sustainable* jobs before the source of your regions prosperity runs dry, or wait until after the coal is gone, & watch the whole area go the way of a host of Rust Belt Towns.
  10. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    I'm suspicious about any economist who predicts the GDP in 40 years time to a precision of 0.01%! ("The main exception is the IGEM analysis, which finds a 2.15% reduction in GDP for the Lieberman-Warner by bill by 2030, and a 3.59% reduction by 2050").
  11. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Good Catch.
  12. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Thank you Yooper.
  13. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Response to moderator: http://therese-phil.livejournal.com/171196.html Google translator will tranlate the link of historical Russian heat waves. This is off topic for this discussion and I will not comment on Russia again.
  14. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Robert - Typo in para 5? as a first attempt but [not?] THE definitive
  15. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    dana1981: I really wish that the current economic distress will be temporary. However, economic history shows that this is far from a temporary condition. The void of leadership in the USA fortells of more floundering, rather than solutions to the debt crisis presented and acted upon. A rise in sea levels of 5 meters will not happen overnight, if it happens at all. According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree?
  16. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Humanity Rules, In the post you seemed to object to, I was referring to making claims based on statistical insignificance, as when many climate deniers misunderstood Phil Jones' remarks about warming since 1995 not being statistically significant as evidence that warming has stopped. A statistically insignificant warming trend isn't evidence either way. This is not the sort of error Dr. Ambaum is talking about. Are you aware of instances where climate scientists have made this error? TOP, Be sure you are not misinterpreting the author as saying climate scientists should be making weaker claims or that they are publishing "statistically significant" results that if tested the way the author thinks they should be would be insignificant. Chances are climate scientists would use Bayesian statistics to show that they can make even stronger claims of confidence. For example, because the physics of climate lead you to believe it should be warming with high probability, you can combine this prior probability with your analysis of the temperature data to give an even stronger confidence in the existence of a warming trend than you would have otherwise. If Phil Jones had followed Dr. Anbaum's advice when calculating statistical significance, he would have said something far less useful to those trying to cast doubt on warming. But I think he was right not to do it that way, as I mentioned above. And I should qualify that by saying I haven't read the paper, only this post, so maybe I don't understand what it is Dr. Anbaum thinks they should be doing when analyzing data.
  17. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Dikran Marsupial posted an excellent explanation of the topic of this post, on Tamino's Open Mind blog. He made similar points to the ones I was trying to make here and here.
  18. Hockey stick is broken
    My comment to part of this article is in relation to the section which says that the McIntyre(2004) publication says that "the hockey stick shape was the inevitable result of the statistical method used (principal components analysis). They also claimed temperatures over the 15th Century were derived from one bristlecone pine proxy record." I do not believe this is a correct interpretation of the aricle - i think the article claims that the hockey stick shape was a results of using an incorrect "scaling" of the time series by using only the last part of the entire time series - the 20th century only. He claims this overly weights the data and results in the hockey stick affect and the hockey stick is not actually resident in the data without this scaling (at least not as a PC1 component). In addition I do not think he claims that the data temperatures where from one bristlecone but that the bristlecone data is not necessarily reliable as it exagerates the true temparuture due to the species magnified growth in a higher C02 environment. This is evident in the article written in 2005 by McKitrick to the APEC Study group titled "what is the Hockey Stick Debate about?"
  19. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn, please make up your mind. First you say these analyses could not forsee the economic problems which were already underway when they were done. Then you say the analyses ignored the current economic distress because they assumed it would be temporary - which is obviously true! I certainly hope you don't think the recession is permanent. Bern @ #10 is referencing the Stern Report (5-20% of GDP spent on mitigation). Your suggestion that mitigation will be cheap because sea level won't rise 5 meters is just a wee bit ridiculously oversimplified and wrong. Phil263 #9 - you may have noticed that GDP was only one of many economic factors analyzed here.
  20. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Re: Camburn (30) You might be better served with investigating yourself the intricacies of both satellite altimetry and microwave sounding unit platforms: Here's an Open Mind piece Tamino did on the overall history and data corrections performed on orbital MSU platforms (rescued from Internet cache files), as well as a Skeptical Science piece on MSU satellite platforms. As far as Jason/Topex/Poseidon, a Skeptical Science piece on that can be found here, as well as one on sea level rise. Documentation on Jason/Topex/Poseidon corrections can be found here. Global altimetry data can be found here, if you're inclined to poke under the hood yourself. Geoid differences can play havoc with expectations surrounding sea levels. Hope that helps, The Yooper
  21. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Ah, BP, so you're saying we should put our immediate efforts toward improving energy efficiency of homes? Replacing thin walls/roofs with the thermal equivalent of your "2 feet thick brick walls"? I agree, there is much to be saved there, and in improving the efficiency of other wasteful forms of energy use. One minor example: when I lived in the US for a while, about 10 years back, I was absolutely astounded by the fact that you had 200-watt standard light globes. I'd never seen anything more than a 100w globe here in Australia (I'm talking standard globes, obviously spotlights and other lights have higher ratings). The thing that I found sad and amusing at the same time, was that, even using higher powered lights than a typical Aussie home, the American homes I saw were much, much darker inside - primarily because most American lights had very dark, heavy lampshades, designed to 'hide' the light, where most Australian fittings seem to be designed to spread light (frosted glass covers being very common here).
  22. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Russian heat wave: Black Swan Event not related to GAWG. So says Dr. Martin P. Hoerling of NOAA. But I have drifted off topic.
    Moderator Response: When making claims, please furnish a link for others' edification.
  23. The science isn't settled
    Eric, if as you wrote you chose to be 100% certain in your belief in a combination of classical, relativistic, and quantum theories that taken together are "completely consistent with the evidence," then you are being certain about at least one proven incorrect theory! Classical mechanics is incorrect if you observe with enough precision. It is not 100% correct for any cases, so you cannot restrict your application of it to certain cases just so you can have it be 100% correct. By your definitions, classical mechanics therefore is not a "theory" at all; it is merely a "notion." So you must believe that all scientists who use the term "classical mechanics theory" are wrong. Which leaves you alone being right. Which should give you pause. That was the reason I brought up the phrase "competing theories." Every scientist in every field uses that phrase, so are they all wrong and you are right? That was the reason I brought up "string theory." You can tack on the word "empirical" if you want, but that does not change my point that there is, to say the least, inadequate evidence to make most scientists 100% certain that string theory is 100% correct and non-string theories incorrect. Yet scientists use the term "string theory" instead of "string notion." Are they all wrong? Even worse for your position is the existence of multiple string "theories"--string theories competing among themselves! Yet scientists call all of them "theories." The reason I brought up inferential statistics as evidence for deciding if a theory is "correct," is that inferential statistics is all about certainty less than 100%. Yet inferential statistical results with certainties less than 100% are used in all scientific fields as evidence for theories. The relevance of all this to your original claim, and to the original post at the top of this page, is that climatologists are not cheating or being lax by stating subjective probabilities of theories being correct. That's how all real, working scientists in all fields work, even when they don't express those probabilities as numbers. Either all of them are wrong, or you are.
  24. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Bern: At the rate of climate change, mitigation is NOT a drain on GDP. 5m sea rise? How many centuries is that going to take? More people die every year from cold than die from heat. And when you talk heat waves....there have always been heat waves. Even the Russian heat wave this summer is not out of the ordinary climate wise. Look at Russian history please. (Besides, the cause was not from co2).
    Moderator Response: You make claims regarding many topics (covered elsewhere on this site), yet furnish no links for others to read and learn from. If you wish to make contributions to the individual threads whose topics you touch upon, please use the search engine at the upper left of each page for the most appropriate thread. Thanks for your compliance on this. Comments deemed off-topic will be deleted from the inappropriate threads.
  25. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    @Camburn at #5: Mitigation is a drain on GDP - if you have to spend 20% of GDP due to effects of climate change, that is not an increase in GDP - it's a very large pile of money & resources that have to be spent to fix a problem, that might otherwise be spend elsewhere. Your analogy of the interstate system is incorrect. The interstate road system is enabling infrastructure. The increases in commerce, trade, and other economic activity that it enabled more than paid for it's construction. Mitigation of climate change, on the other hand - how does it help the GDP if you have to evacuate every city below 5m above sea level, and reconstruct them on higher ground? How does it boost GDP to repair damage after more severe weather events? How is GDP increased by crop failures or increased mortality from heatwaves? These are all the sorts of effects that may occur from global warming induced climate change. I don't for a second doubt that there is the potential for some people to make a lot of money out of it (construction firms, for instance, will be busy for centuries rebuilding coastal cities on higher ground), but I'm afraid I don't see how that's a good thing for the economy, overall. It's like saying a plague is good for the economy, because all those extra coffins & burials cause a boom for the undertaking business...
  26. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Daniel: I could show a chart showing negative sea level rise. I question the metrics of Jason/Topex. If they are as accurate as Grace was with the mass of ice loss, then they are inacurate. I picked on station in the middle of the Pacific. I was surprised at what NOAA had as I thought it would be more of a rise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The tidal effects etc would be minimal in that area. In response to the moderator: I am sure that NOAA uses the latest tech when reporting sea levels by guage.
  27. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    The first problem with the above analyses is the assumption that GDP is a valid measure of a society's well being. GDP has been criticised by a number of economists including Nordhaus, Tobin and Daly who developed an alternative measure (ISEW: Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare). The second problem is the assumption that ongoing economic growth ( particularly in the US) is desirable. There is now a solid body of economic literature including work by Herman Daly and others which demonstrates that endless economic growth is not possible in our finite world.
  28. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Also, just noticed your earlier point. "It looks like the output of a chaotic system". If you look at the instruments for just about any component of a power plant then they "look" chaotic too. You cant tell chaos by just looking at the graph. One feature of chaos is quasiperiod cycles, but milankovitch cycles are not quasiperiodic as analysis would show you. You would get a better feel for cause by plotting global temperature against estimated net forcing through time. Please, please try reading and understanding the science rather than reading to try and find an excuse to reject the conclusions.
  29. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    renweable guy: This isn't about profits to investors. IF that was the case, the Carbon Exchange in Chicago would not have shut down. This is about the economic impact to people. Fossil fuels are finite, no question about that unless you are Russian. The cost of fossil fuels will go up as they become more scarce. They are doing so now in case you haven't noticed. That, in and off itself, will drive people to conservation all on their own. IT is called economic self interest. Business is wayyyyyy ahead of cap and trade on carbon issues. One looks at energy consumption as a cost and does everything possible to reduce that cost. It is much much cheaper to insulate a building, install new windows etc than it is to pay the price of increased energy. That is one of the reasons that the US is a low, per unit of production, energy consumer. Short term thinking will get us cap and trade with no decernable effect on temperatures. The Copenhagen accords would have resulted in how much of a decrease in temps if the models are to be believed? Provide the figure if you would. And for that measely decrease, what would be the cost? Think in terms of economic stress, not only dollars, pounds, rubles etc. Cap and trade is an idea that was started by Enron, endorsed by Goldman Sachs. Why do you think they invested so much money in the concept? Prof Hansen sees through the smoke and mirrors of this idea. I have to agree with him in that it is about the most stupid idea that has every come about with regards to co2 restraints.
  30. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Norman, "I am looking for changes in Earth's Albedo. Primarily during known ice ages." You can save yourself a lot of time trying to find things about climate science but just going to the ipcc WG1 report. (Why dont you just read it). Radiative forcing estimated at -3.2W/m2 for effects of ice and lowered sealevel. Vegetation change estimated at -1W/m2. GHG changes are estimated to contribute -2.8W/m2 for comparison purposes. See the report for references (many) on which these numbers are based. However, this has nothing to do with chaos. Albedo is straightforward and well-behaved. Also, remember your calculator is for airless earth. "It may take thousands of years for the intitial effects to demonstrate the chaotic nature of the climate system with all its complex feedbacks. " What is lacking is any evidence for your assertion. On the contrary, climate seems to behave instead as function of net forcings. If you are waiting for some effect in from say pinatoba to influence climate, then you are in for a very long wait.
  31. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/14/debt-commission-carbon-budget/#more-36867 Climate Progress is probably one of the best I know for talking about costs of AGW. Cap and trade will reduce our dependence on oil over time by 200 billion a year. Reducing our trade deficit by half. Cap and trade is a wise investment in the future of any country that practices it. Becoming energy independent is the best investment any country could make in themselves. The failure of a business is to not recognize the importance of long term planning taking carbon into their business models. Increasing carbon into the atmosphere will cost much more than reducing carbon for our energy consumption. Short term thinking will only get us problems down the road. The benefits have been laid out for us to look at. We need businesses to see the importance of long term goals of the world society. This has to go wider than just profits to investors.
  32. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    #30: "stay within the bounds of the published work." OK. Look here, where we discussed the gross generalization in a 'published work' stating that many climate scientists are computer illiterate. In this case, the gross generalization was "this paper suggest 75% of climate science papers use statistical significance in a "misleading" way". My point was and remains: Broad generalizations like these include everyone in the affected class. That includes Watt$, Godd@rd, Mc&tyre and the like. If you want to stick with this nonsense, that requires that 75% of climate change denier posts are misleading. Better to drop both the name-calling ('fear-mongering'? really?) and the gross generalizing. Then maybe we can have an intelligent conversation.
  33. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Re: Camburn (28) Why do you select a chart showing sea level rise at one tide station (which shows the sea level rising at that station) and then point to it as an example that:
    "there is not wide spread warming occuring."
     What does sea level rise at Midway Atoll have to do with warming? How about re-phrasing the point you wanted to make so that my partially non-functional brain can understand it. Thanks! The Yooper
  34. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #24 muoncounter I am still looking for a way to demonstrate my point... You state: "The earth's average albedo is given here as 0.30 or 30%. We do not go 'from one extreme to the other'. Here is a prior SkS article on the question of albedo. Look at the graph (figures 2 and 3) of measured albedo anomalies in that article; a big anomaly is on the order of 1%. That limits the plausible range of your slider bar considerably. We do not live in a world that is all desert one day, all ice the next, all forest the day after that." You, like the others, seem to think a chaotic system must happen really fast or the system is not chaotic. Why do you think this? I thought a chaotic system was a particular characteristic and I was not aware it was time dependent. I am looking for changes in Earth's Albedo. Primarily during known ice ages. The articles I looked at only stated the Earth's Albedo went up during ice ages but they never seem to give an estimated amount. On Science of Doom I found a blogger who gave a number...not sure where he got it from but it may show that albedo is far from constant or stable in the longer time scale of Earth time (not our time). Science of Doom page with post I refer to, name is Bill Illis. Bill's post: "Earth’s Albedo has varied throughout the last 650 million years between 25% to 50% (29.83% today) depending on the continental arrangements and the amount of ice that builds up and spreads out from the poles. That is a big range and the values are capable of explaining the majority of the temperature changes over the period." Thats the best I could do for now. Put 0.25 in the calculator and 0.50 for albedo and see how this variation effects Global Temp.
    Moderator Response: Norman, it sounds like you still have not read the Intermediate version of this post. You should read it carefully, because it describes chaos and explains why climate is not chaotic. If you are not really trying to assert that climate is chaotic, but only that climate cannot be predicted, then you should read the different post Models are unreliable--both the Basic and Intermediate versions--and you should comment on that post rather than this one that is devoted to the technically defined "chaos."
  35. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Re: HumanityRules (30) Classic example of confirmation bias. Based on essentially a sample size of 1 issue of 1 climate science publication, author Ambaum demonstrated at least one instance of misuse of significance testing in approximately three-fourths of the articles in the issue. No surveying of other publications in the field, no controls to other publications in other fields. Again, a sample size of 1. Based on that, HumanityRules conflates that into
    "No it means 75% of all climate research is in part misleading."
     Sad. There was a time when I thought you had something constructive to offer, HumanityRules. Now I find I can't take you seriously anymore as it seems you aren't even trying, preferring to serve up inflammatory distortions instead. The Yooper
  36. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    "No it means 75% of all climate research is in part misleading. This is surely not a "denier"/fear-mongerer issue. " Lacks in rigor, not "is in part misleading". I love the way that HR and others latch on to one paper critical of statistical analysis in science, and immediately cast aside all the supposed "skepticism" they show towards published work. I imagine it's because HR and others believe this shows some gaping problem with climate science that undercuts the fundamental overwhelming scientific consensus that increasing CO2 will warm the planet somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 C per doubling.
  37. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    24.muoncounter No it means 75% of all climate research is in part misleading. This is surely not a "denier"/fear-mongerer issue. In fact given that many on this website believe almost all peer-reviewed literature is in support of AGW then this paper is a critique of the mainstream science, "deniers" should be left out of the discussion because this paper has not researched the space where the audience of this website believe "deniers" predominantly publish. Let's stay within the bounds of the published work. (I'll drop the name calling when others do)
  38. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Alec Cowan, What are the costs then?
  39. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    71.michael sweet I think it's clear what I want them to say. Some of the 2010 warmth is from the 2009/2010 El Nino. It's not clearly stated and for that reason it's not picked up by the press that's reporting it. Again Modest? 4/19 largest El Nino since 1950. You too want to underplay the role of the 2009/2010 El Nino in the temperature record? Please explain how being in the top 25% of strongest El Nino since 1950 justifies the description modest? It's clear to me they go to great detail to explain how La Nina will influence the later months of 2010 and into 2011 but have no detail on how the El Nino influenced the 1st half of 2010. As you and others have said this is a detailed description of ENSO's role in short term temperature trends, I'm not questioning that. It is also a description of 2010's temp. Given these facts how can they omit such an obvious detail as the early 2010 temperature was influenced by the 2009/2010 El Nino? This is important because it influences the way it's reported to the public. Please Michael/Ned specifically deal with the lack of explicit attribution of the early 2010 warmth to the 2009/2010 ENSO and the impact of how it affects reporting etc because I'm just repeating myself here.
  40. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    The extremely slow rise in sea level indicates that there is not wide spread warming occuring. http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=1619910
    Response: "extremely slow rise in sea level indicates that there is not wide spread warming occuring"

    The key here is that you've used sea level at a single location to infer there's no "wide spread warming". A single location is not a good indicator of global sea level as individual locations can be influenced by local subsiding rates, tectonic uplift, varying rates of thermal expansion due to regional ocean warming, etc. A better metric for "wide spread warming" is global sea level:



    For more info, see our page on sea level rise.
  41. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Dana1981: The analyses of Waxman-Markey totally ignored the current economic distress. It thought it would be temporary. The rise of debt to GDP just in the US is not temporary. renewable guy: Semi trucks have become predominant because the rail road is so inefficient at moving perishable cargo. That is why you see most semi trucks pulling a reefer type trailer. We differ on the cost of future GAWG consequences. I see any mitigation required as adding to GDP rather than subtracting from it. The reason being that climate moves so slowly that mitigation will be like building the interstate highway system. We aren't going to wake up tomorrow to an earth temp 2.0C warmer than yesterday.
  42. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    69.hank mean monthly global temperature anomaly I enjoy your attention to detail but it changes nothing.
  43. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The costs of future AGW consequences will reach 20% of GDP in the BAU scenario. I read this over and over from climate progress. This was also not covered in this article. Possibly for a little more advanced version of this could be included in a future article of "co2 limits will hurt the economy". Plus if this is designed correctly, it helps the poor, reduces the trade deficit, efficiency of automobiles is increased which can actually lower the cost of transportation. Semi trucks will be forced to give up freight to the railroad because it is more efficient. The person that plays their cards right reduces costs and gains more financial and energy security in an uncertain future.
  44. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #26 KR "A chaotic system shows extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Weather does exhibit this behavior (the "butterfly effect"), but climate, as defined by long term averages, does not" Are you sure about this statement? You can look at the links I posted for scaddenp and explain why the high degree (10 C temp cycle)and relative numerous Global temp cycles are taking place. The graph is jagged with little uniform behavior. Check out this on rapid climate change in the Sahara. Things totally changed in that area the last 100,000 years. Sahara desert climate change. Quote from the above article: "The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variation between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years." And your proof for this statement is? "A small variation in cloud cover doesn't affect global temperatures 20 years out by +/- 5 degrees. The albedo changes of parking lots in Europe don't determine whether we're heading into meltdown or an ice age. The climate simply doesn't have divergent behavior based upon small condition changes - rather, it has a straightforward (albeit non-linear) predictable response to changes in conditions." You seem stuck on rate of the change to dispel what the longer term clearly demonstrates. A volcano may indeed cause a drastic change in climate but just not on the short time scale of 20 or even 100 years. It may take thousands of years for the intitial effects to demonstrate the chaotic nature of the climate system with all its complex feedbacks.
  45. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    And the costs aren't .5 to 1% per annum either.
  46. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn - the analyses of Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman were done during the current economic distress. You're also ignoring the fact that unabated climate change will also have an adverse impact on the global economy.
  47. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    #23 scaddenp Your questions: "Lets suppose that climate IS chaotic. Now what is the time scale for predictions to fail for imprecisely known systems? For weather, its about 4 days. For the solar system?? Successful model predictions would suggest that it is not chaotic on scales so far worked on. Do you seriously think that your questions about albedo etc. are not built into the climate models? Could be time to study them" The last question is not part of this current point. I do not know what exactly are in climate models but the point of discussion is not about models, it is about the potential for climate to be chaotic (as defined in the mathematical view). I am not sure, by the definition of chaos on the links above, that chaos is a time dependent phenomena. Because of the size and momentum of the Earth's system the chaotic changes are slow and won't show up in 30 year study but do seem to show up when the time frame is extended. All of you have looked at these graphs. If you plot a chaotic system point would not it look similar? Forget the time scale and look at the system itself as a whole. Look at the many fluctuations in Global temps in 400,000 years. 5 million years of Global Temp with many unpatterned fluctations but not random which is a sign of chaos.
  48. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    The major flaw in all of the mentioned studies is that non could have forseen nor implimented the current economic distress of the world. The precarious nature of most major countries economies for the forseeable future because of the explosion of government(local/state/federal) debt will be a continuous drag on the growth level of GDP of the world. A world wide growth level of 2% per annum, impacted by carbon pricing costs of .5 to 1.0% of GDP is not acceptable and will only cause even more widespread unrest. We are in perilous times, the cause of which is not carbon based but financially based from over extension.
  49. Models are unreliable
    "Seriously, why is the code and results different for each climate model if the science is "settled"?" You have that backwards. The fact that the coding differs and the same results are acheived is actually a good thing -- an indication that the science is settled with respect to effects of CO2 on climate. You know as well as I that the code would differ even if the models worked at the same spatial resolution, represented ocean-atmosphere coupling in the same way and had identical degrees of detail the terrestrial carbon cycle (not to mention other things). Different software languages are used, there are different limitations on computing resources, and scientists have to make innumerable little decisions about how to handle input data. The fact that all the models can only produce the increase in temp over the last century only if the effect of CO2 is included indicates that those coding decisions have no bearing on the issue of whether anthropogenic CO2 has an effect on climate. I also agree with the sentiment of the Nature article - scientists (and biologists in particular) need more expert training in coding. But, I think climate scientists are probably the ones on the cusp of the effort to code better and more openly.
  50. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Norman, you do not appear to have looked at the definition of a chaotic system. A chaotic system shows extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Weather does exhibit this behavior (the "butterfly effect"), but climate, as defined by long term averages, does not. A small variation in cloud cover doesn't affect global temperatures 20 years out by +/- 5 degrees. The albedo changes of parking lots in Europe don't determine whether we're heading into meltdown or an ice age. The climate simply doesn't have divergent behavior based upon small condition changes - rather, it has a straightforward (albeit non-linear) predictable response to changes in conditions. As Tom Dayton stated, until you understand the definition of a "chaotic system" your statements will not be relevant to this topic.

Prev  2079  2080  2081  2082  2083  2084  2085  2086  2087  2088  2089  2090  2091  2092  2093  2094  Next


The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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