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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 104701 to 104750:

  1. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    #56: "What the hell are they teaching in science in schools?" Now, now, scadden, every school must have its top-of-the-class and those who major in 'Rocks for Jocks' or 'Science for Poets' or even 'Computers for Poets'. The good news is that these bottom-dwellers can find full employment -- as yes-men to the Watt$ of the world.
  2. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: PaulPS It's been my experience here, first as a longtime lurker, then an occasional questioner to someone now able to answer most questions without shooting myself in the foot (well, mostly), that all posing questions framed honestly are treated with respect and dignity. Which reflects the majority of questioners. I have been known to spend several hours researching the answers to questions put to me. As have others here. But at the same time, we're human. And it does get exasperating to answer the same questions from the same questioners for the umpteenth time. And to rebunk the same debunked zombie memes over and over again. Sometime from the same poster. And sometimes people get personal here. Hence the need for the Comments Policy. It IS possible to disagree without being disagreeable. Most of the time, the sub-thread involving KL would not have gone far, as the Mods do a pretty good job catching the egregious comments. But sometimes, as evidenced by John's in-line comment, some bad ones slips through the cracks. Which is why, in this case, I advocated for it to be left as a teaching moment (rather than deleting a bunch of comments). For most people, being polite and courteous comes naturally. And enhances the learning potential for everyone reading. So we (I) look forward to trying to help answer any questions you may have here. Honestly, and politely. Like the Boy Scout I was raised to be (OK, never made it to Eagle Scout...but I was a Boy Scout). The Yooper
    Moderator Response: Thank you for encouraging politeness and reminding us all about the Comments Policy. Now let's see if we can get this discussion back on topic.
  3. Real experts don't know everything
    Phila at 11:39 AM on 11 November, 2010 Other than the implied assumption I might do that, thanks for the advice.
  4. Real experts don't know everything
    PaulPS @31: However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough? As long as you don't go out of your way to be offensive and insulting, and can refrain from accusing thousands of scientists you've never met of being dupes or frauds without offering any evidence whatsoever, I think you're very unlikely to get the "Ken treatment."
  5. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Since La Nina cools global surface temperatures by cooler water upwelling from the depths to the surface and absorbing heat from the atmosphere, wouldn't La Nina accelerate the warming of the oceans by increasing the transfer of heat from the atmosphere into the oceans?
  6. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Bern @ 87. The best *commercially available* solar panels have a conversion efficiency of 24%-& it would be hard to find one with anything less than a 16% conversion efficiency. There are models in the Lab which currently get greater than a 40% conversion efficiency. All of this progress is being made on, virtually, the "smell of an oily rag"-in terms of R&D funding.
  7. Real experts don't know everything
    I have been observing this site for at least a year or so to get informed, and learn a little about Climate Science from both sides. However, if I ask a question or bring up a controversial point, I'd prefer not to get the Ken treatment! Fair enough?
    Response: The main issue with Ken's comment was the "religious belief in alarmist AGW" comment. It was perfectly possible for him to make his scientific arguments without resorting to that ad hominem. If I'd been awake at the time, I would've deleted the comment as it violates our comments policy. By the time I woke up this morning, a whole discussion had sprung from it and in those cases, I just have to cut my losses. Note to moderators - any ad hominem comments that equate the other side to having religious beliefs should be deleted.
  8. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Wow Beranyi, your desperate attempts to defend a dirty & inefficient source of power-straight out of the 19th century (i.e. coal)-are really quite quaint. Yet your increasingly specious reasoning betrays the weakness of your original argument-that being the use of a 30 year old solar farm to "prove" that solar power is a bad investment. I mean, if you want to quibble over numbers, then I can always talk about the Transmission & Distribution losses from Coal Power stations (about 10% to 12% of total capacity in most areas), or the vast amounts of electricity generated-between 8pm & 8am-that never get used. Your claims regarding solar panel efficiency are entirely off-beam, btw. Solar panels being sold on the market at the time had an average conversion efficiency of about 10%-12% (some were even as high as around 20% around 2006-2008). This means that, even for this poorly lit region of the world-using the most inefficient solar panels of the time-should get around 16 Watts/square meter. The only thing I will agree on is Bern's point about the folly of building a solar farm so close to the Pole. In more appropriate regions (pretty much anything south of Canada), the *real* energy density of solar panels is much closer to the numbers I've previously cited-& its improving pretty much every year, whilst prices continue to drop (current US price is about $3.50/Watt). Yet, as I've said before-ad nauseum-the *real* beauty of photovoltaics is that you don't need to build them as "Solar Farms", you just build them on available roof spaces-& other vacant areas-& you can get the equivalent of a power station. For instance, the average residential rooftop in Australia can easily fit about 4kw worth of solar panels. Now even if we assume only 1 million such homes being available for fitting, that comes to 4 million KW of peak power-or about 4,000MW-the equivalent of about 4 regular sized coal-fired power stations, without displacing a single acre of farm land, national park or urban development area. Try doing that with a coal power station & see how far you get.
  9. Ice-Free Arctic
    Re: Artful Dodger (52) Digested the links. Sobering. From 2004 to 2009 (using ICESAT data), 336 cubic miles of multiyear ice, or about 3 times the volume of Lake Erie (if represented as ice), has been lost to melt, not advection out the Fram or other exits. Gone. See ya, ne'er-pass-this-way-again. Finito. And under the column 'Peak year of loss' for $200? Any takers? Bueller? Nope, not 2007. 2008 lost about 50% more ice due to melt than 2007. Think on that for a minute. So much for the "recovery". The next summer with a strong Arctic Dipole sees an ice-free pole. Especially if it coincided with a strong El-Nino and/or a wakening sun. If not 2011, then 2012 becomes likely... We live in interesting times. The Yooper
  10. Berényi Péter at 10:24 AM on 11 November 2010
    CO2 effect is saturated
    #48 Albatross at 05:50 AM on 11 November, 2010 Berényi Péter, Please clarify. Do you believe that the CO2 effect is saturated? Of course it is, in most of the 14 μm - 16 μm (wavenumber 625 cm-1 - 710 cm-1) absorption band. In this frequency range effective height of the photosphere (the region from where photons have a reasonable chance to escape to space) is above 20 km, well in the stratosphere. As there is a thermal inversion there (the higher one goes the hotter it gets), with increasing CO2 levels outgoing thermal radiation increases (this is why it is not shown in Harris 2001). There are two narrow bands on both sides of this range which belong to the wings of multiple absorption lines there. In these bands CO2 IR optical depth is close to unity and this is where effective height of photosphere is still below the tropopause. In the troposphere temperature usually decreases with increasing height, so at a specific wavelength more CO2 means less outgoing radiation. On the low wavenumber (long wave) side there are strong H2O absorption lines as well, so the effect only works in an extremely dry troposphere (mostly in the polar regions where low level dry-freezing occurs). Therefore stuff usually happens only at the upper edge of the 8-14 μm main atmospheric thermal IR window (lower edge of wavenumber 710 - 1250 cm-1). In this frequency region there are no major absorption lines (except O3 lines around 1040 cm-1), just the somewhat mysterious water vapor continuum. Partial pressure of water vapor decreases more rapidly with increasing height than that of carbon dioxide, so at frequency bands dominated by H2O absorption effective thickness of photosphere is much smaller. Therefore outgoing thermal IR radiation in these regions is extremely sensitive to minor variations of water vapor distribution. As atmospheric H2O distribution is fractal-like on a scale spanning many orders of magnitude, this effect is neither modeled nor measured sufficiently.
  11. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    As much as I think Berenyi Peter's arguments about facility area are specious & misleading, there does seem to be a point regarding the potential income from that plant. 120,000MWh/yr at 3.85c/kWh is only $4.6m per year in revenue, if you sell the power at prevailing wholesale rates. Not a very good return from a $300m investment (just a smidgeon above 1.5%). On the other hand, you could say that solar panels at the north pole are a poor investment, and you'd probably be right. Somewhat closer to the equator, on the other hand, the numbers might change a bit... and then there's the whole other question of "how much money is it worth spending to avoid catastrophic global warming?" Of course, we want to spend that money in the most efficient way possible. Putting solar panels in far northern or southern latitudes is probably not the way to go. The Ville @ #83: I think the 2.25% figure comes from considering the entire area of the facility, which is four times the area of the actual solar panels. Not sure where the 8.94% efficiency for the panels comes from - I thought that most panels were getting closer to 15-20% these days, but must admit I haven't checked the numbers lately.
  12. CO2 effect is saturated
    Thank you scaddenp :)
  13. Philippe Chantreau at 10:21 AM on 11 November 2010
    Real experts don't know everything
    KL throws out a funny again. With UAH, the models were right and the "data" wrong. Willis ran into the same thing. Instances of model right/obs. wrong are numerous across many fields. Models based on physics should always be trusted over measurements made with sensititve equipment subject to many potential errors. It's funny how skeptics are also eager to cast suspicion on obseved data if it does not show what they want.
  14. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Yet still, at the end of the day, we're left with the fact that you *can't* build a coal power station *without* significant disruption to the landscape-whereas you can build the *equivalent* of a solar power station *without* disruption to the landscape-by using roof-top space, road-sides & other spaces in the city & suburbs that currently go unused. Heck, they're even talking about putting solar into window tinting material & just under the surface of roads! The reality is that, when you account for the power station, the coal mine & the land used to dump toxic fly-ash waste, the environmental footprint of a coal power station is *huge* compared to solar farms-even ones that use technology that was nearly 10 years old when construction began. Given recent leaps forward in conversion efficiency, we can expect the footprint of the latter technology to keep dropping-regardless of where its built-whereas the footprint of coal power will always remain very large!
  15. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    In all fairness to Berényi, the average power in W/m^2 (not the peak power) for a wind or solar plant is one of the critical numbers, along with associated energy storage capacity, such as thermal banks for concentrated solar. On the other hand, Ville and others are correct that the surface impact of fossil fueled plants does include ongoing mining operations. This makes area comparisons difficult.
  16. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Re:Berényi Péter@81 and my last comment. Regarding area of facility. If this idea was applied to fossil fuel power stations then you would have to include the land used to store big piles of coal, the mining facilities, the roads and railway lines. eg. it is ludicrous to do a watts per square meter calculation based on facility (infrastructure) size. It is possible, but since it isn't done for fossil fuel fired power stations, it shouldn't be done for solar farms. You either have to do it for every type of generation system, or none of them, you can't pick and mix the rules.
  17. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Berényi Péter@81 I think it is a bit dubious to work out the 'W/m squared' based on facility size rather than panel area. If you start doing that then fossil fuels would take up a huge area because of the supporting infrastructure, mining etc. to support them. Or in other words, your numbers are fundamentally junk. The only valid figure to use is 14.2 W/m2 (assuming you got that calculation correct) unless fossil fuel use is re-assessed based on land use. I wouldn't like to work that one out. Also where do you get the 2.25% figure from?
  18. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Interesting study suggests alternatives to fossil fuels aren't being developed fast enough, oil will run out 90 years before: News article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101109095322.htm Research publication (subscription): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es100730q I'm not sure whether studying markets is the best way??
  19. Real experts don't know everything
    Michael @27, I'm not sure what the point of your quote is. You and/or Lindzen forget that anthropogenic climate change (ACC) affects the entire biosphere. That is why people talk about "consilience", and consequently why it involves research across many scientific disciplines. Not only that, but ACC and athro activities also affect people's health. Can I also point out the irony of Lindzen making that (misleading) assertion. Have a look at the "qualifications" (and in some cases the quotation marks are warranted) of the signatories of the Oregon petition and/or OISM petition. Dr. Lindzen does protest too much. Actually, he seems to be employing an infamous Karl Rove technique-- (falsely) accusing others of doing what you are actually doing.
  20. Real experts don't know everything
    Ken Lambert spews: "So in effect what the climate science ‘consensus’ is saying is that when the observation does not match the MODEL – then the MODEL must be right and the observation is not good enough (wrong). This turns the scientific method on its head." Well, actually, when the UAH people crowed that satellite measurements showed cooling rather than warming about 10 years ago, in disagreement with model predictions ... It turned out that UAH had serious errors. When those were corrected, it turned out that UAH had ... more serious errors. Now we find that UAH is in good agreement with the models. So, no, it doesn't turn the scientific method on its head. Where there is disagreement in science, there are efforts made to reconcile the disagreement. And when models and observation diverge ... *both* are subject to scrutiny. Because observations, as well as models, are subject to error. Not that Ken Lambert cares ...
  21. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    "How can anyone actually believe that an oscillation of surface temperature and pressure -- essentially a dyamic system's response to a perturbation from equilibrium -- can be a driver of long-term climate variation?" Because a lot of people who wont/cant do the arithmetic believe its all a natural cycle and temps will go down again. If you switch off from any data that contradicts this view (its all UHI, black carbon, XBT errors, satellite calibration, poorly located tide guages etc) then every La Nina looks like confirmation of your expectation - and you only look for confirmation of your beliefs, right? What the hell are they teaching in science in schools?
  22. CO2 effect is saturated
    Riccardo - a better link I think is Dessler & Davis 2010 ?
  23. CO2 effect is saturated
    Norman, can you please reference exactly where "The claim was made that the warming from 1981 to present was unique". I'd like to see the exact text of this supposed claim. The errors already pointed out to you dont ring any alarm bells for you?
  24. Real experts don't know everything
    "Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to “global warming,” any scientist’s agreement will do. The answer almost certainly lies in politics." - Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, M.I.T. Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Prominent skeptic, and OISM petition signer, 1992
  25. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Sphaerica at 04:33 AM on 10 November, 2010
    I also believe that I've read that the conversion factor is roughly 1.2, so +0.14C/decade troposphere equates to a surface change of +0.168C (pretty close to NASA GISS at +0.166C).
    The factor 1.2 is the ratio of the global TLT trend/surface trend (~30 years). It can't be used to scale surface anomalies to TLT anomalies and vise versa. Sphaerica at 04:59 AM on 10 November, 2010
    Perhaps the difference lies in what the AMSU near surface data actually represents. I'm not well informed on that particular detail.
    The near surface layer gets a lot of interference from water vapor, precipitation and ice on land and in the clouds. It's really not the best choice for temperature sounding. Albatross at 05:18 AM on 10 November, 2010
    The RSS page has a nice figure showing how the weighting works for different channels,I am not aware of such a figure for UAH.
    Try to dig up any of the papers by Spencer and Christy. They show the weighting functions. Sphaerica at 07:59 AM on 10 November, 2010
    My factor of 1.54 (or 1.55) is used to convert the LT temp into a corresponding surface temp, e.g. Ts = (1.54 * Tlt) - 134.16 for 30 day smoothing, and it does so with a fairly high correlation.
    Your high R2 values may be an artifact of the smoothing process.
  26. Berényi Péter at 07:02 AM on 11 November 2010
    Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    #73 Marcus at 17:00 PM on 10 November, 2010 The Sarnia Solar Farm in Ontario, Canada (hardly the sunniest part of the world), has 80MW of peak capacity & covers an area of around 900,000 square meters-or about 80 Watts/square meter. Come on. Peak capacity means naught. If anything, only average capacity has an economic value. Sarnia Solar Energy at a glance: Capacity peak: about 80 MW of emissions-free power Power purchaser: Ontario Power Authority Facility size: Located on 950 acres Panel surface area: about 966,000 square metres, which is about 1.3 million thin film panels (First Solar) Annual yield: about 120,000 MWh CO2 saving: over 39,000 tonnes per year Jobs created: About 800 jobs created at construction peak, as well as indirect benefits to dozens of businesses in the Sarnia area, including engineering and design firms, construction subcontractors, suppliers and service providers. Let's see. The annual yield, 120,000 MWh is 4.32×1014 J. There are about 3.16×107 seconds in a year. Therefore nominal average capacity is 1.37×107 W (13.7 MW). It is only 17.1% of peak. Panel surface area is 9.66×105 m2. That's 14.2 W/m2, a bit less than 80 W/m2. However, facility size is much larger than raw panel surface. It is 950 acres, that is, 3.84×106 m2 (3.84 km2). 13.7 MW divided by 3.84 km2... is 3.56 W/m2. At the latitude of Sarnia (43°N) average annual insolation at TOA (Top of Atmosphere) is 317.2 W/m2 (484 W/m2 in June and 138 W/m2 in December). However, about 30% is reflected back to space and another 20% is absorbed before getting down to ground level. The 160 W/m2 average left is used at a meager 2.25% efficiency (8.94% for net panel surface). In wintertime, when it is cold and dark, so energy is needed most, capacity is less than 6 MW (1.56 W/m2, 7.5% of peak). That's reality, if you know what I mean.
    View Larger Map They say the additional 60 MW (peak) capacity costs US$300 million to install (they've purchased 20 MW from First Solar for US$100 million) and it's just 5$/W in investment. As we have seen, in reality it is closer to 30$/W. A 20 year contract with Ontario Power Authority to sell the power is part of the deal. Now, Average Weighted Retail Price of electricity in Ontario since Jan 1, 2010 is 3.85¢/kWh. At this price annual nominal production of 120,000 MWh in 20 years brings in a stunning US$92.4 million. US$307.6 is still missing somehow, and that's with zero operational costs. In normal circumstances only a madman makes such an investment. However, we do not know at what rate Enbridge is selling it to the Ontario Power Authority. If it is at least five times the market price, with the important provision the Power Authority is obliged to buy it not when it is needed but whenever it is available, it may bring in some profit in the long run. On the other hand of course only a madman would buy something not needed for five times the market price, but it is public money, isn't it?
  27. CO2 effect is saturated
    Berényi Péter update your citation database, apparently NCEP is biased.
  28. Real experts don't know everything
    There's one thing it's easy to lose sight of in our repetetive rebunking of the same zombie arguments (usually from the same commenters over and over again): we are judged by more than just those we respond to. There are far more lurkers than contributors on sites like this. So comments must also be for posterity for the silent majority. I lurked here and at other sites like RC and Open Mind for nearly 2 years before finally chipping in (I remember it vividly: a question on Arctic amplification at RC)...and the realization "Hey, I KNOW this!"...
  29. CO2 effect is saturated
    Berényi Péter, Please clarify. Do you believe that the CO2 effect is saturated?
  30. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    #44: "I'm interested in what sort of variability the ENSO sytem introduces into that metric, " Every time one of these ENSO flaps comes up, I'm struck by the same question: How can anyone actually believe that an oscillation of surface temperature and pressure -- essentially a dyamic system's response to a perturbation from equilibrium -- can be a driver of long-term climate variation? The only clear long-term variation in the MEI ENSO graph shown by John B above is the change-over from mostly negative to more frequent positive in the mid-70s. Run the cumulative of this index and you see a strong relative minimum in 1976. After that point, it's steadily upwards. The five negative dips since then (including the current one) do not erase the long term trend. Here's an older version of this graph from an old Bob Tisdale blog:
  31. Real experts don't know everything
    I agree with Daniel Bailey. It is helpful to leave these comments in. I have to deal with these types of comments every day with my students. If we just delete them we do not learn ways to address the concerns that they raise. Just because their comments are politically based does not mean that we can ignore them. We have to address every issue the skeptics raise or they will hammer on the ones we ignore. That said it is tedious to keep up the wack a mole forever.
  32. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Now, here's something that's just plain wrong. HumanityRules wrote: So those descriptions from the NASA GISS report "2010-How warm was this summer" should all have explanations of how El Nini is influencing them. Obviously they don't because any description of natural variability would confuse the message. You obviously didn't bother actually reading the GISS report that you cite, because it's absolutely chock-full of discussions of the ENSO cycle and its effects on short-term fluctuations in global temperature. I'm not going to quote any specific sentence from the report, because the whole thing is full of references to El Nino and natural climate variability. Seriously, I'm really bothered by HumanityRules's sneering dismissal of the GISS report. Having actually read the report, I think it's a great model of how to talk about the fact that any given year's spatial-temporal pattern of temperatures and precipitation is the result of interactions between short-term natural variability and the long-term warming trend from AGW. Please, HumanityRules, either read the GISS report if you haven't actually done so, or explain why you think that the more than a dozen references to ENSO in a sixteen-paragraph press release are somehow insufficient.
  33. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    John Bruno writes: Anybody with extra time on their hands want to take on comments 44 and 45 above? - JB Well, I don't really have time on my hands, but I'll take a shot anyway. As quoted at the top of this thread, Art Horn originally wrote: "strong La Nina events drop the Earth’s average temperature around [0.6 C]" and also "The most recent La Nina developed in the spring of 2007, and persisted until the early summer of 2008. The global average temperature fell [0.6 C] in that period of time, equal to all of the warming of the last 100 years!" The first statement is true if you look at short time scales. If you want to look at sub-annual-scale variation in global temperature, then yes, the ENSO cycle can cause global temperatures to fluctuate by 0.6 C for short periods of time. The problem is when you compare that to a different form of variation in climate (e.g., AGW) that occurs over much longer time scales ... as Mr Horn does in the second quote cited above. It's completely inappropriate to compare the short-term variation from ENSO to the long-term variation from AGW ... because over the long term, all the short-term variations will get averaged out. As John Bruno notes in the post at the top of this thread, when you look at the annual data, ENSO only has about an 0.1 C effect on temperatures. If you look at longer scales (e.g., decadal averages) it's negligible. The statement that the temporary, short-term drop in temperatures from La Nina is "equal to all of the warming of the last 100 years" is deeply misleading. The drop in temperature from day to night, or from summer to winter, is far greater than "all the warming of the last 100 years" ... but we recognize that the diurnal cycle and the seasons are short-term, cyclical phenomena, and that the large amplitude of the temperature change will be insignificant when averaged out over long periods. HumanityRules, does this clarify things at all?
  34. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Re: John Bruno. I can't do it now from my cell but will later. Unless someone (like Ned, for example - heh!) beats me to it.
  35. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Anybody with extra time on their hands want to take on comments 44 and 45 above? - JB
  36. Real experts don't know everything
    Re: JMurphy above. Complete agreement. On one hand, it is egregious enough that I would delete it for the reasons stated. However, the other hand is more compelling: we see in one comment the underlying thought process and motivations driving KL. So I say it would be more instructive to others, and serve as a lasting testimonial, if retained. KL and BP have torpedoed what cred they had with their recent comments.
  37. Real experts don't know everything
    Ken Lambert wrote : ...religious belief in alarmist AGW...overwhelming ‘concensus’ was an invention of green driven polemical scientists...media shy colleagues (thousands of IPCC participants)..." Can I just say that this is sad, predictable, incomprehensible, bemusing, snide, cheaply insulting, baiting, etc., etc., conspiracy-theory distraction from the (indeed, any) subject in hand. Is it better to leave it there for all to see what so-called skepticism is all about - and how difficult it is to argue against views that are, in the end, based on political belief, rather than science ? Why are such assertions/beliefs allowed on Skeptical Science ? For balance ? (Don't publish/keep this comment if you think it transgresses the rules but I am fed up of reading the same old nonsense over and over again. It's bad enough on other sites but on this site...?)
  38. Tarcisio José D at 01:45 AM on 11 November 2010
    Real experts don't know everything
    God post S.L and exelent idea of prof. Oreskes. If we loock to the selfcontrol of planet temperature we don't see anything. Bat I think: Greenhouse effect, the bigger the better if there is enough water in the soil to evaporate. The study of the thermodynamics of the atmosphere shows that a portion of heated air, with an appropriate moisture content (vapor), to ascend into the atmosphere following a moist adiabatic, surpassing the 500-hector-Pascal level, where the greenhouse is divided 50% above and 50% below. There, in argument 25 I post a anima.gif about this.
  39. Real experts don't know everything
    Ken Lambert #16 The last 6 years of upper 700m OHC is flat and deeper 3000m is not much either (0.1W/sq.m according to latest Willis on Argo). Would it be fair to summarize your argument as "it hasn't warmed since 2004, so there's no global warming"? The period is just too short to find any climatological trend. About the Royal Society: of course, it's a document worth reading in full, but as a soundbite I could draw this one: "When only natural climate forcings are put into climate models, the models are incapable of reproducing the size of the observed increase in global-average surface temperatures over the past 50 years. However, when the models include estimates of forcings resulting from human activity, they can reproduce the increase."
  40. Real experts don't know everything
    Ugh, Ken -- I think one of your wheels is stuck. You stake your claim on OHC, period, and then point out that OHC is difficult to measure. Meanwhile, surface temps keep rising, arctic ice is in rapid decline, stratospheric temps are dropping, TOA is dropping, sea level is rising, Antarctic land ice is in decline, global glaciation is in rapid decline . . . and you just called thousands of scientists mindless robots, the same scientists who are trying to bring you the data you cite. You're right about the models, though: Mann and Hansen never tried to refine their models, did they? And there was only one IPCC report, sometime back in the 1990s, I think. Of course, I could be wrong, but, like others, I would never admit it.
  41. Real experts don't know everything
    Nick Palmer #18: "KL says that XBT measurements before 2004 were "fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless" Seems like he should believe that any ocean measurement is not yet reliable enough to establish reliable trends so he cannot suggest that there is no ocean warming (yet)." Clearly all data which contradicts a viewpoint is false... and all data which supports it is unquestionably true. And anyone who disagrees with such logic is acting based on religious convictions rather than rational thought. Scary scary people.
  42. Real experts don't know everything
    Ken Lambert at #16 "To have warming you need an excess of heat energy entering the biosphere over that leaving." Well we have that - increased IR has been being measured coming down from the sky to Earth and decreased IR has been measured leaving Earth towards space. Even the main sceptic scientists acknowledge that we are warming. If KL can't see it in the oceans why would this be? Perhaps because he is only looking at the top 700 meters for only six years. Nino/Nina/Enso cyclical variations temporarily overwhelm the small but cumulative AGW increases. KL says that XBT measurements before 2004 were "fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless" Seems like he should believe that any ocean measurement is not yet reliable enough to establish reliable trends so he cannot suggest that there is no ocean warming (yet). If the ocean measuring is not reliable enough yet, then he should ignore it as a source of speculation and instead rely on the aforementioned measured radiative imbalance to jump to his own conclusions. Personally, if my radiative equilibrium is upset by someone wrapping me in a duvet on a hot day, I start to sweat. planets are bigger but the same basic laws apply. Don't "sceptics" notice this effect?
  43. Real experts don't know everything
    @Ken Lambert "The Royal Society has recently laid out the bare facts of 'global warming' and properly categorized the great uncertainties and soberly debunked the alarmists." That isn't the message I took from the Royal Society report, and I would say you are grievously misrepresenting their conclusions (and you won't be the only one): Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
  44. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Sorry, Daniel! :-) Louise, I should add that most of the comments following that WUWT post are, as usual, remarkably confused and misinformed. Anthony Watts is doing a terrible disservice by promoting and encouraging all that nonsense.
  45. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Re: Louise (46) Short answer: he's full of crap. Selling snake oil. 1. Whitehouse cites no specific sources for any of his claims about temps...argument by assertion. 2. He executes a standard display of the Gish Gallop. One could spend days countering the myriad ways of the litany of errors he introduces. Louise, you can trust someone writing a column on a blog who speaks calmly and rationally, but whose point is that everything the experts in the field are saying is wrong, just trust him. Or, you could trust the experts. Who show their data and their work publicly. NASA, NOAA, GISS, etc. It's all there, for the world to see and evaluate. Don't trust the details to blogs - even this one. Go to the source, the experts themselves (whatever the field) for expert opinion. Blogs such as the one you cite exist to tell you what to think. Think for yourself. You already do, that's why you came here with your question. That's the beauty of the Internet generation: we no longer need to take someone's word on anything. We can find out the details and the truths ourselves, if we are inclined. I spent several years digging into the field, reading all of the core literature and studies before making my own mind up on what to belief. I chose verifiable science. And to help others learn for themselves. Aw, crap. Ned beat me to it. Must type faster then me. Anyway, hope this helps, The Yooper
  46. Real experts don't know everything
    The arguments are simple. The issue is global warming. To have warming you need an excess of heat energy entering the biosphere over that leaving. To raise overall temperatures the heat content of the biosphere must increase – tending toward a higher equilibrium. The main place to store this heat is in the oceans. The ocean heat content in fact should show up the integral WRT of most of the radiative imbalance at TOA. The last 6 years of upper 700m OHC is flat and deeper 3000m is not much either (0.1W/sq.m according to latest Willis on Argo). So finding an increase in OHC is critical to the whole theory of TOA heating imbalances – and the theory of AGW. So far OHC content measurment before 2004 by XBT is fraught with error, poor coverage and probably useless. Argo is better – but the 6-7 analyses show OHC in the upper 700m converging on flatness. NO increase in OHC – NO global warming. CO2GHG theory (and all the other estimated forcings) must be neutral for no warming to occur. So in effect what the climate science ‘consensus’ is saying is that when the observation does not match the MODEL – then the MODEL must be right and the observation is not good enough (wrong). This turns the scientific method on its head. The method of observation – model – observation – adjust model – observation – refine model: is turned into – MODEL and go away and find observations which match it. It is clear that a religious belief in alarmist AGW is still blotting out the reality that the overwhelming ‘concensus’ never existed. The concoction of overwhelming ‘concensus’ was an invention of green driven polemical scientists who verballed their media shy colleagues (thousands of IPCC participants) into minimising the great uncertainties of climate science and exaggerating anything which smacked of warming. The Royal Society has recently laid out the bare facts of 'global warming' and properly categorized the great uncertainties and soberly debunked the alarmists.
  47. Keep those PJs on: a La Niña cannot erase decades of warming
    Hi, Louise. The post you mention is just a lot of handwaving. There aren't really any facts in the post. His argument is as follows: (1) He claims that temperature has been "flat" for the past 15 years. (2) He then suggests that it would be implausible for natural coolings to have exactly counteracted the supposed anthropogenic warming trend. (3) Therefore, he implies that there's something "suspicious" going on (presumably, that AGW is a hoax). But that argument is wrong from the very start. Temperatures haven't been flat for the past 15 years -- in fact, they've risen faster during this period than they were before. Here's a plot of satellite-measured temperatures from RSS: Note that during the period when Whitehouse claims that temperatures have been "flat", they actually rose at exactly twice the previous rate (0.131 vs 0.065 C/decade). Basically, Whitehouse's post over at WUWT is just spin. There's no substantive content at all, except for a false claim about the global temperature trend. Frankly, as WUWT posts go, that one isn't even especially interesting. Most of the nonsense that Anthony's site propagates is at least much more "creative" than that!
  48. Real experts don't know everything
    The deniers intent is simply to delay by sowing doubt. During that delay, they continue to make profits. This strategy was used for the first time by the tobacco industry to deny the link between ill health and cigarette smoking. Naome Oreskes, therefore, coined the term "Tobacco Strategy" to describe it.
  49. Real experts don't know everything
    DESMOGBLOG is well worth looking at regularly. As it says there : Unfortunately, a well-funded and highly organized public relations campaign is poisoning the climate change debate. Using tricks and stunts that unsavory PR firms invented for the tobacco lobby, energy-industry contrarians are trying to confuse the public, to forestall individual and political actions that might cut into exorbitant coal, oil and gas industry profits. DeSmogBlog is here to cry foul - to shine the light on techniques and tactics that reflect badly on the PR industry and are, ultimately, bad for the planet. I also find SourceWatch and ExxonSecrets useful for checking up on groups or individuals. Oops, hope the so-called skeptics don't get too paranoid and start discussing 'black-lists', etc...
  50. Real experts don't know everything
    There's this interesting feature of deniers of being "all around" deniers. The guy that says "it's the sun" never desagrees with those who say "it's not warming". Fred Singer denies global warming (unless it exists and is unstoppable), CFC ozone depletion, as well as DDT and tobacco health risks. A fairly famous meteorologist in Brazil denies AGW, which is caused by ODP or the sun or a vague natural cycle related to deglaciation (it varies), and it's not happening at all because it's just the urban heat island effect. He also denies CFCs as the cause of ozone depletion. That's just a big conspiracy of DuPont, because CFC is too heavy to reach the stratosphere. It's no use arguing that CFC has been actually measured in the stratosphere. And if you talk to them, that's how science works. Denying and dodging the available evidence means "debate".

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