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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 107051 to 107100:

  1. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    #149: "under this definition, anthropogenic CO2 unambiguously qualifies as a pollutant." CG, Brilliant statement, concise and to the point. The EPA's Technical Support Document (warning, big pdf) makes the case in detail: CO2 is a long-lived (or well mixed) GHG, atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased due to anthropogenic emissions, other gases classified as such are already accepted as pollutants; thus anthropogenic CO2 is a pollutant.
  2. Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
    Heh. "Prince of Cherries". Meanwhile the ice volume remained far below previous record lows through the end of September. Ice volume is now only about 20% of what it was in 1979 while extent is about 60%. However, the two factors ultimately ARE linked... if volume hits 0% extent perforce will as well. Unless the volume trend suddenly levels off for some reason Goddard only has a few more years (at best) of being able to play games with extent data.
  3. The sun upside down
    RealClimate had a post about this too. The way I understood, if this turned out to be right, TSI would have the opposite influence in surface temperatures than previously thought. (did I understand right?) I think this is the kind of claim that will need extraordinary evidence to hold. The influence of TSI over temps seems quite well established and well supported by evidence, like the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age, or the rise in temps until the middle of the 20th century.
  4. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    I have a quibble with an ambiguity in the original blog posting here, which has partly contributed to some of the useless bickering that has followed. The definition of "air pollutant" specified in the original blog refers to atmospheric emissions. This does not describe the CO2 dissolved in bottle of Kőbányai Világos lager, but the anthropogenic CO2 being emitted from smoke stacks and automobile exhaust pipes. This is CO2 that is being added to the atmosphere (in massive quantities, I might add) by oxidation (i.e. combustion) of carbon in fossil fuels. Reference to CO2 in any other context is a 'red herring'. The original post above concludes:
    "CO2 is a Pollutant When considering the legal definition of "air pollutants" and [the] body of scientific evidence, it becomes clear that CO2 meets the definition and poses a significant threat to public health and welfare."
    To be precise, this statement should have specified "anthropogenic CO2". The referenced definition for air pollutant is a factual statement of the language in the Clean Air Act, and under this definition, anthropogenic CO2 unambiguously qualifies as a pollutant. BP and others have contributed their own personal definitions of pollutant, where CO2 does not qualify. With due respect, these arguments are circular (in that they presume the conclusion), and irrelevant. More significantly, they ignore the scientific evidence regarding the global impact of anthropogenic CO2 on climate, and by extension, on global ecosystems, which has at least the potential to exceed the effects of any natural disaster, aside from an extremely large meteorite impact. Just because the effects of anthropogenic CO2 will occur over the course of decades, does not mean they are not real.
  5. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    BP, Are you claiming that no gases should be considered pollutants?
  6. Global warming impact on tropical species greater than expected
    Of some interest to this thread is the related Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years discussion. I suspect that some of the more successful tropical species will be the ones that migrate pole-ward, as invasive species in the temperate zones.
  7. The human fingerprint in coral
    headpost: "Plants prefer carbon-12 over carbon-13. This means the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 is less in plants than it is in the atmosphere." Does this preferential uptake of carbon-12 also apply to corals and their algal photosymbionts?
  8. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    The 800 px wide screen has been dying a death for a few years now. The BBC abandoned it some 2 years ago or so. 1024 is the new bottom end. I agree with mbayer it would be a good idea to optimise for 1024.
  9. Global warming impact on tropical species greater than expected
    Chris: From your link to coldest winter in 13 years: "This winter was still warmer than the long-term average." When we claim winters warmer than average are now cold that tells us what the trend is. From coolest September in five years: "The city had an average maximum temperature of 21 degrees, making it the coldest September in terms of daytime temperatures in three years. This is despite being warmer than the long-term norm of 20." Have the last five Septembers been the hottest five on record? If we limit our records to a single year it will always be the coldest year.
  10. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    BP, Where is the causal link between lead in gasoline and a specific injury to children? tThere is lead in the environment and also in paint. When scientists learned how dangerous lead is it was banned for all uses. Now, 40 years later, people are not getting exposed to lead like they were. Oil companies claimed it would make gasoline much more expensive, but they were wrong. It is the same with CO2. BP and RSVP, your claim that CO2 is "different" is ignoring the facts about previous pollutants that were controlled. If you ignore enough facts you can support any argument you like.
  11. Global warming impact on tropical species greater than expected
    Praise be. But what really concerns everyone is just how infrequent the record cold temps are compared to the frequency of the hot record temps. I really do not want to see what might happen if there were no record cold temperatures showing up anywhere in the world. Or is that comment related to the view of warming being like transposing music? I see so many people saying that if it's warming why can't I look forward to things being milder where I am (UK or US). It's not supposed to be like transposing a piece of music up a third from C to E. It's more like a couple of toddlers joining you at the piano and banging discordant keys anywhere and everywhere.
  12. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    @BP, GC: it's not very classy to try and recuperate the Hungarian tragedy as an argument against considering CO2 a pollutant. Excess CO2 is harmful to all, so considering a pollutant is spot on.
  13. It's the sun
    @Ken: don't be so arrogant when you keep missing the same point over and over again. In fact, by saying that "well-mixed greenhouse gases" is the same as "positive AGW forcing," you confirm the point I was making - and admit it's false to claim that it was a zero in 1750, because there *were* greenhouse gases in the atmosphere back then. Again, the reason these start in the middle of the graph is that the graph measures deltas, not absolute values. Wrapping your ignorance in a big layer of jargon isn't going to make it any more valid, I'm afraid. (See, I didn't even need to put numbers in my post to demonstrate yours was wrong. That's called logic - you should try it sometimes.)
  14. It's freaking cold!
    Tom Loeber - The post you are referring to here was from me. I was following the request of the moderators to move the discussion to a more appropriate thread. You were asked repeatedly to move the discussion yourself; the deletion of off-topic posts (off topic in the ice age thread) has been a standard of this site since it began. It's worth reviewing the Comments Policy. That wasn't a cross post at all - it was a redirection to the appropriate thread. If we don't try to keep on focus in our discussions, it makes it impossible for anyone else to (a) see relevant postings and to (b) contribute to an ongoing exchange. If we toss useful information onto a thread where nobody will ever think to look for it, we're wasting our time!
  15. Climate Cherry Pickers: Falling sea levels in 2010
    The cherry-picking continues, but this one is on sea ice extent, so here's the more appropriate thread.
  16. Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
    The Prince of Cherries is at it again. the ice itself is about to set a record high for the date in the DMI database (emphasis added). BTW, that database includes the years 2005-2010. We are about to set a record high for a specific date in a statistically insignificant 6 year period. Huzzah! With just 3 more years, we draw a different conclusion: Note that the annual rebound of new ice is always steeper than the melt. And yes, even with globally increasing temperatures, there will still be winter in the Arctic.
  17. The human fingerprint in coral
    Thanks John - great job of fixing links :-)
  18. Global warming impact on tropical species greater than expected
    Funnily enough, Doug, I read today it was Sydney’s coldest winter in thirteen years and Sydney’s coldest September in five years. Additionally, we we had our coldest day in thirty years last June. But 2010 seems to be tied as the warmest year on record worldwide.
  19. The human fingerprint in coral
    I'll finish off the comment omitting some of the links, which are a bit hard to reconstruct. Basically, corals can adapt to some extent to a drop in pH and still make calcium carbonate but apparently at the cost of metabolic stress, which may in turn lead to less efficient growth and/or reproduction. Some species are much more adaptable than others. Temperature rise can lead to proliferation of algae . Temperature rises may also cause metabolic stress. Corals consequently face a potential double whammy. However, it's important to distinguish between reef damage attributable to drops in pH rises in temperature and damage arising from leaching of fertiliser from agricultural land which can trigger proliferation and expulsion of algae (which give corals their characteristic brown red colouration) thus causing bleaching. Interestingly, although corals first appeared in the Cambrian period, some 542 million years ago, fossils are extremely rare until the Ordovician period, 100 million years later, when Rugose and Tabulate corals became widespread. As readers of this site know well,CO2 was much higher in the late Ordovician although temperatures were much lower because solar output was also lower during these periods. At the same time, given the lower temperatures at the time, ocean pH would have been significantly higher as seas would have been more saturated with CO2. Admittedly, the Rugose and Tabulate corals of the late Ordovician are now long extinct and so may not tell us that much about what will happen with modern coral populations or their capacity to adapt to significant drops in pH.
    Moderator Response: If you could check your links in your comment at 6 above to see if they were what you intended, I think I fixed them. Previewing comments before submitting catches a lot of issues. :)
  20. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    Nice new look. Does the increased central column width allow images wider than 450px? I second CBD's suggestion re comments policy, which needs to be up high. There's plenty of room in the right column (I'm not a big fan of twitter feeds on the front page). Would some form of advanced search or comment search be possible? By topic, date range, commenter all come to mind. With all the thread jumping to stay on topic, finding where a conversation went after it started can become a chore.
  21. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    The header background is being repeated horizontally for about 20 pixels. See http://i52.tinypic.com/2njvpk2.png and note the mouse pointer which indicates where the repetition starts. The header, http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/header3.jpg is more than 1024 pixels wide. The 800x resolution is used by about 1-2% of users worldwide, while the 1024x resolution by about 20-30% (decreasing, but still most popular). You may want to optimise for 1024 pixel width. Depending on the CMS you use, you could add support for mobile users, such as with http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-mobile-pack/
  22. The human fingerprint in coral
    @ #7 Roger A. Wehage : Perhaps by combining "Plants prefer carbon-12 over carbon-13" plus the food chain starts with "plants" so any byproduct will reflect this preference plus much calcium carbonate in coral reefs being provided by coralline algae, you can find the reason for the value starting below "the measured standard for carbon stable isotopes". I was taught to firstly look for the answers within the system and look for an external event as a last resort. I find this approach not so common every time I read some debate about climate change written in English. Is there something I should know?
  23. It's the sun
    archisteel #668 The KR chart at #623 uses the same data as IPCC AR4 Fig 2.4 forcings which are labelled 'Anthropogenic' (AG my shorthand). Natural Forcing from Fig 2.4 is Solar irradiance. 'Well mixed greenhouse gases' forcing is a sum of CO2, CH4, N2O and Halocarbons - which are termed 'long lived greenhouse gasas' in same Figure. At 2005 CO2 contributed about 1.66W/sq.m and CH4 and the others about 1.0W/sq.m - total about 2.7W/sq.m - which aligns with the green curve in Chart #623. All these AG forcings are supposedly caused by fossil fuel burning and and did not exist before AD1750 - and were pretty small before AD1850. So 'well mixed greenhouse gase forcing' archisteel is in fact the main positive AG forcing - same thing. Maybe a short course in IPCC AR4 would help your understanding.
  24. Roger A. Wehage at 22:34 PM on 11 October 2010
    The human fingerprint in coral
    Now I see that Mike Palin@2 explained it, but it didn't register with me, I guess.
  25. The first global warming skeptic
    Glenn Tamblyn the gaussian shape was used just to show the behaviour in the wings of the absorption. It's not really a gaussian but a convolution of different broadening mechanisms. The line width of an isolated molecule would be very small. It would be given by the so called natural width, which is a manifestation of the uncertainty principle applied to time and energy. If the molucule is not isolated, the two most important broadening mechanisms are Doppler and pressure broadening. The former is the well known Doppler effect applied to the emission of electromagnetic waves by moving molecules. The speed of the molecules depends on temperature, so the effect will be larger at higher temperatures. The latter is due to the influence exerted by nearby molecules on the emitting molecule. Usually collisions dominate, but there could also be an electrostatic contribution. It depends on pressure (through the number of molecules) and on temperature (through their speed). It depends also on the gas composition, i.e. the species that collide or otherwise interact with the emitting molecule. The broadening effects have been first noted exeperimentally, the theory followed to explain the mechanisms. The reason why different absorption lines have different strength is quantum-mechanical in nature and involves the probability of transition between quantum states. In classical physics terms, we may immagine the strength of the line as dependent on the change in the dipole moment during the vibrations. On passing, this is the reason why O2 and N2 in the atmosphere do not interact with IR waves, no change in dipole moment during the vibration. Absorption strength and line broadening are two really complicated issues; a proper treatment is way beyond the reach of a blog post. I apologize for being so generic.
  26. Roger A. Wehage at 22:28 PM on 11 October 2010
    The human fingerprint in coral
    Perhaps the answer to my previous question in #7 might lie in the International PDB standard for Carbon Dating. The following definition was taken from the "Volcanic activity" reference in #7. Isotope ratios are, usually, expressed in δ-units. In the case of 13C/12C isotope ratio in carbon dioxide, the δ-value is given by: δ13C = (R13sample/R13reference-1), where R13 represents the abundance ratio [13C]/[12C]. Usually expressed in per mill (‰), it is referred to the PDB-standard material (Belemnite of the Pee Dee formation in South Caroline, [13C]/[12C]=11237.2 10-6).
  27. Roger A. Wehage at 22:05 PM on 11 October 2010
    The human fingerprint in coral
    What is the justification for starting the delta 13C change at -1.5% in the graph? My first reaction to this post was, "Something must be missing. What about the CO2 12C/13C makeup in ice core samples?" Two articles, and there are others, shed more light on the subject: Preindustrial People Had Little Effect on Atmospheric Carbon Levels in Science Now and Stable isotope constraints on Holocene carbon cycle changes from an Antarctic ice core in Nature. I still don't understand the justification for starting delta 13C change at -1.5% in the graph. At what point in time was delta 13C change at 0%? Volcanic activity can also modify the 13C/12C ratios and bias the measurements. Does the report note any activity in the vicinity and make appropriate adjustments?
  28. Berényi Péter at 21:24 PM on 11 October 2010
    Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    #143 gallopingcamel at 16:09 PM on 11 October, 2010 I will send some money to that link you provided Thank you. All be aware there is an ongoing scam operation to divert donations using fake websites like http://www.Voroskereszt.Com http://www.HungarianRedcross.Com http://www.MagyarVoroskereszt.Com http://hungarianradio.com There may be others. Always double check sites like these before using them. It is hard to understand the extent of such problems but I suspect it will be more severe than Chernobyl but less horrible than Bhopal. Fortunately the scale is much smaller than Chernobyl and the stuff released is also more manageable (even if its sheer volume is enormous). Neither is it nearly as lethal as dioxin pollution at Bhopal. Still, it is bad enough. However, at least the Danube appears to be saved at the moment due to heroic efforts to neutralize pH of sludge. We will also see to what extent and how fast Mother Nature is able to mitigate the effects by turning Sodium Hydroxide in sludge to baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate) using atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Heavy metal contents of the stuff is controversial. Government experts say it is hardly above environmental levels while Greenpeace claims it is extremely toxic. I think the problem may be some of the metals are bound in water soluble complexes now as opposed to their original insoluble state in source rocks. I still think treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant in a legal context is a silly move. At the philosophical level one can rearrange concepts any way one likes, but the legal battleground is an entirely different matter. Neither the liability insurance business nor the judical system can cope with emissions where you can't trace down causal links from those responsible for it to actual persons suffering damage using plain common sense or standard expertise. Therefore if actual pollutants, where this procedure is supposed to be straightforward get mixed up with other stuff in legalese, you get laws that are impossible to implement, opening up one of the richest sources of lawlessness this way.
  29. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    Mentioned only in case it elicits a "me, too!", the smartphone and twitter info is bleeding off the right side a bit here when running 1024x768. All good at 1400x1050.
    Response: Hmm, the width is now 1050 pixels. I might shave 30 pixels off the middle column just to bring it in under 1024.
  30. The human fingerprint in coral
    Some broken links - sorry - too hard and too little time to fix so the comment is somewhat incoherent :-(
  31. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    Maybe my eyes are not what they were, but I view the pages in a slightly enlarged view (Firefox). When I get the centre column in new format at the size I used to use the right column overflows the screen unless I scroll over. That does not worry me if I can be sure that there is nothing that I need to be aware of on a normal basis.
  32. The human fingerprint in coral
    Some interesting work suggests coral reefs may also be under threat under threat from non-anthropogenic sources of CO2 and other anthropogenic non-CO2 related hazards . The impact of non-anthropogenic CO2 is presented here as a model of the potential impact of anthropogenic ocean acidification. Some reefs, however, seem to have evolved resilience in the face of rises in temperature . It seems some corals have evolved resilience in the face of temperature rises . I note concerns about acidification is presented here as related predominantly to dissolution of calcium carbonate. However, problems with acidification are complex in that acidification impacts more strongly on bleaching and productivity than calcium carbonate formation. I could not find much other material relating to coral resilience to acidity beyond this article in a sceptical source - I did not have the time or inclination to follow up the references in the article but thought I'd include the link for what it's worth. Looking at a peer-reviewed source, it seems that coral symbiota involved in initiation of coral bleaching events show greater capacity to pass on traits associated with resistance to warming than do corals - not a good outlook, if this is correct. At the same time, the appearance of corals in the Ordovician when CO2 levels were much higher (though temperatures lower) may warrant further discussion.
  33. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    I've always used the highest resolution the computer can handle, so the change makes the SkS layout now look less like it was designed to fit under a postage stamp. Glad to hear that the 'no more than 800 pixels' web page standard is finally dying. For the right column... I'd suggest that might be a good place for some of the 'hidden' / 'lost' pages. The one that I always have trouble finding is the page where you can put in sort conditions like 'peer reviewed', 'skeptical of AGW', and 'within the last month' to get a list of submitted links. I've found that a good way to keep up on the latest research... when I can find it. Also, the comments policy is linked by the comment box, but nowhere on the main page. I know there have been other pages I've seen once or twice and then lost track of.
  34. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    Design wise it is much better. The mobile phone apps weren't the sort of thing that had a higher level of importance than arguments and other info. So shifting them to the left gives a better balance.
  35. The human fingerprint in coral
    And I forgot to mention the standard sample, because I didn't konw the coral standard. For ice cores they use standard mean oceanic sea water. Mike's answer should help clear up the coral bit :)
  36. The human fingerprint in coral
    Eric L: the change is per mille. Which is like per-cent, but per thousand rather than per hundred. So it's a fractional change, but to get to per-cent divide the figures by 10. (this sounds small, but it can be a very sensitive test - it's the sort of stuff they use to determine temperatures from ice and sediment cores)
  37. The human fingerprint in coral
    Eric L- The y-axis scale is given in "delta" units which represent the deviation in parts per thousand of the 13C/12C ratio in a sample - coral calcium carbonate in this case - measured relative to that in the international reporting standard for carbon stable isotopes - PDB, a carbonate fossil (belemnite) in the Pee Dee Formation in South Carolina. A value of -3 indicates that the 13C/12C ratio of the sample is lower than that of PDB by 3 parts per thousand or 0.3%.
  38. The first global warming skeptic
    Riccardo I have read a similar description over at RealClimate and the general point being made seems to be that a major part of the increased absorption involves CO2 (and I presume other GH gases in their behaviour) absorbing at some central wavelengths first and this absorption then 'spreading' to adjacent absorption lines at higher concentration. You describe it as following a gaussian distribution. The point that isn't clear is why, if CO2 has a range of absorption frequencies, the central lines would absorb preferentially and thus saturate first. Why don't we see equal degrees of absorption across all the absorption lines. All the descriptions I have read to date make good sense apart from the explaining the causal mechanism of WHY that gaussian spread occurs. Is this theoretically derived, observational, what? This seems the only missing piece in the puzzle as far as an explanation of this goes.
  39. The human fingerprint in coral
    I find the y-axis of the graph a little confusing -- it appears to be a negative percentage change, but it isn't clear what the baseline the change is being measured against is. Also, one thing you could make clearer is that I don't think the total amount of C13 in the atmosphere is declining, it is the percentage of all CO2 which is C13 that is declining.
  40. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    PS. with "predetermined maximum width" I mean: predetermined maxiumum FIXED width, so that the center column is already the right size before the right column gets built.
    Response: The centre column already did have a fixed width (I increased it from 520 to 600 pixels in the new design so the centre didn't look swamped by the surrounding margins). However, I've added a few extra constraints in the code so hopefully the columns will display at the right width even while the page is still loading.
  41. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    @ Moderator: How did you know I was using Firefox? ;P Anymoo, it worked :D but would it be possible to either give the center column a predetermined maximum width or create the right column before the center column? It now goes like: Left column, ENORMOUS center column (yes, I have widescreen) all the way up to the right, lots of movement, right column stealing width to squeeze in, still more lots of movement, ahhh... finished! Even though I *do* love SkS, the page buildup has always been a bit on the slow side (in fact SkS made me change from IE to FF, because in IE the country flags on top of the pages.... appeared.... kind.... of.... one.... by.... one.... which was a bit annoying), and imho it would look a lot better if the center column gets built without all the movements (i.e. after the right column). Don't know if it's HTMLwise possible, though. ;)
    Moderator Response: Firefox is to IE what color TV was to black and white: a vast improvement in experience and enjoyment of the medium. Once the initial transition/learning curve is over, you wish you'd done it years earlier.
  42. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    BP #140 I agree the mining disaster in Hungary is terrible (and I have Hungarian connections in my family). However pollution can manifest itself in different ways, in much the same way that the disease process can be acute or chronic.
  43. Skeptical Science now an Android app
    Thanks for the app! To follow up on the QR code: it's a way to quickly get to an app download by taking a picture of a barcode with the phone in your android device. There's a link to this app at Skeptical Science Android App. John, you might be a able to put the barcode image right on this page.
    Response: Have added it above, thanks for the suggestion.
  44. gallopingcamel at 16:09 PM on 11 October 2010
    Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Berenyi Peter (#140), Your countrymen are experiencing real pollution and you have the sympathy of people all around the world. It is hard to understand the extent of such problems but I suspect it will be more severe than Chernobyl but less horrible than Bhopal. Our problems with the Gulf oil spill are probably tiny by comparison. Of course I will send some money to that link you provided; I wish I could afford more.
  45. Temp record is unreliable
    Re: The Inconvenient Skeptic As scaddenp rightly points out, you are in error. The atmosphere is layered, like an onion. The different dataset sources measure different things. Attempting to homogenize them into a "blended" dataset is less like comparing apples to oranges than it is comparing apples and breadfruit. Attempting to shift the focus of the debate to "skeptics using satellite only and the AGW crowd using CRU only" is also misleading. Scientist use the theory that best explains the preponderance of the data. Multiple, independent lines of evidence (of which station data and satellite data are but two) show that our world is warming and that we are causing it. That is what science is telling us. Most "skeptics" choose to focus on part of the evidence available rather than all of it. I can appreciate wanting to roll all of the instrumental data (station and satellite) into one neat package, but it isn't necessary. It's rather like combining the four Gospels into one continuous narrative: while interesting, it doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. The Yooper
  46. Temp record is unreliable
    Well me, if I wanted to know what is going on in the surface record, I would use the surface temperature record. If I wanted to know what is going on in lower troposphere, I would use MSU data. Giving the complexities in the relationship, I would certainly not be interested in a combination, least of all one put together with arbitrary weightings. What would you think of someone doing this in your area? Think you could get such an approach published. I did indicate how you would combine them properly but first you solve a very difficult problem. Also, the idea that "skeptics" use satellite and AGW use surface is bogus. It is use for what purpose.
  47. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Weeds are perfectly ordinary plants in the 'wrong' place. Noxious weeds are those in the wrong place whose vigour threatens an environment or a crop. There are good reasons for authorities to ban or control them. (There's a similar argument about vermin and other pest animal species.) Pollutants are substances in the wrong place and /or the wrong quantity. (Flooding other than normal predictable water flows for the area is in the same category.) Authorities have good reason to insist on proper drainage arrangements for their own and for private property. They also have good reason to regulate all sorts of things from tanneries to chemical factories to private incinerators - write your own list. Very few of the things that need regulating, controlling or eradicating are "unnatural" or inherently poisonous. They're the simple consequence of human activity. Careless or thoughtless activities like those that introduce vermin or weeds or overflows to an area. Others involve lack of foresight or knowledge when undertaking actions like introducing cane toads to Australia or choosing to expand coal fired power technology around the world when other options were available. Regulation, control or eradication are all appropriate responses when the dangers are known.
  48. The Inconvenient Skeptic at 15:29 PM on 11 October 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    Doh!!... Those darn links... Working link. I did indicate that the satellite measurement is a measurement of wavelength. I am not saying that it is perfect method, but none of them are perfect. Hadley and CRU also give different results. This is the one place where anomaly is beneficial. I think it is a more useful method than all skeptics using satellite only and the AGW crowd using CRU only. Instead of arguing about interpolation methods and UHI I am using more sources of anomaly data. If you have a better proposal for incorporating satellite data into a standard record I am all ears. I don't particularly care what method is used, but a single set that attempts to use the station and satellite data would be helpful for all.
  49. SkS Housekeeping: right margin
    Me too, looks good.
  50. Temp record is unreliable
    John Kehr - you do realise that they dont measure the same thing? (and your link doesnt work). Satellite data lower troposphere is temps through section of atmosphere at around 4000m. Try reading up on how MSU measurements are made, corrected etc. ALL of them valuable, all of them show a warming trend. I think your method of combination is bogus - you need to find a way to reflect the way lower troposphere temperature operates with surface temperature.

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