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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 107851 to 107900:

  1. We're heading into an ice age
    Mr. Murphy, there is so much. The record cold that destroyed the livelihood of Mongolian herders, killing their livestock, the record cold across the whole south of China that was said to be the worst in more than 700 years, the record cold and snow in Washington state and descending into Oregon that helped kill my mom two years ago. The NE US and Europe cold that Professor Hansen explained away as weather not climate. England is stated as having their coldest winter on record within the last two years. I could give you a list as long as my arm of record cold events, widespread and on all continents and it appears since they just don't fit your hypothesis you can't see them. It is my opinion that the greatest danger we face is epistemic relativism. Might does not make right. Majority opinion does not determine truth. Observe to formulate opinions ad infinitum. Don't opinionize to formulate what you can and cannot observe.
  2. We're heading into an ice age
    My understanding is that when Milankovitch first proposed his theory he suggested gravitational influences from stars other than our own play a part in the comings and goings of ice ages besides eccentricity of orbit, influence of other planets, etc.. That seems pretty outrageous to me, tantamount to astrology. BUT that theory totally absolves humanity from having to watch what it does to the atmosphere as far as avoiding the threat of tipping the climate into its most stable state, ice age conditions. Most likely people reading this have college and university experiences. Look at who provides scholarships, awards and "prizes" more than any other source of money. It is the fossil fuel and the otherwise military associated companies that play a major role in determining funding, who gets degrees, who gets well paying jobs and who gets to be teachers. Do you think this does not lead to across the board mistaken assumptions that downplay the danger of burning fossil fuels? The way I have come to describe it, the interglacial is like a house of cards. It takes a long time to build but can collapse fast. The Hamaker hypothesis appears to fit the evidence better than the Milankovitch theory. Unlike the Milankovitch theory, the Hamaker hypothesis has led to experiments that strongly suggest its relative validity, real time experiments. The Hamaker hypothesis is not just dependent on the interpretation of past events like the Milankovitch theory is, solely. Many small and large scale experiments show soil remineralization greatly increases biomass and carbon dioxide sequestering. The Milankovitch theory does not explain noctilucents. They get in its way so I see, such as in the following article they are ignored, not even mentioned, though earth albedo is found to be the driving factor and not solar insolation Interglacials, Milankovitch Cycles, and Carbon Dioxide 2/10 Scientific understanding has been found to be quite wrong before despite a vast majority of established scientists, teachers, lecturers, politicians etc. holding most vehemently to the mistaken assumptions. It is even more easy to have those mistaken assumptions when they absolve any danger of the promulgation of the main money making enterprise of the richest fraction of the population. Noctilucents, a fly in your ointment, gentlemen.
  3. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Also, Doug hits the ball out of the park in this comment: What's really ironic and kind of funny in light of your word choice is that many more pages of what many of us think of when we use the term "verbiage" were donated by "skeptics," forcing the EPA to explain again the science behind the policy. The comments portion is an exhaustive encyclopedia of wrong thinking about climate science and science in general. Exactly. The reason the EPA's document is so lengthy is that they made their scientists sit down and write patient, careful responses to every single objection or criticism, no matter how ill-founded. The end result is actually rather reminiscent of Skeptical Science itself, as has been pointed out previously.
  4. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    GC #87 EPA initiatives intended to improve the environment are often wrong headed and costly. I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again. What is it with "skeptics" and argument by assertion? If you want to make this case, you need to demonstrate -- not just announce -- that the EPA's policies are "often" wrong and costly. It'd also be helpful to provide hard evidence that EPA policies routinely lead to worse outcomes than doing nothing. None of that would demonstrate that they're wrong on CO2, of course, any more than Dred Scott demonstrates that the SCOTUS is wrong on CO2. But at least your argument would have a little bit of substance, as opposed to none.
  5. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    gallopingcamel writes: Ned (#86), Great graph! I am sick of all those graphs that exaggerate effects by suppressing the zero. Thank you. There is no definitive rule for what's appropriate in scaling graph axes. In some cases, extending the axis to 0 is appropriate. In other cases, it merely serves to obscure information that could be presented more clearly by a different choice. In this case, the Y axis needs to cover the range from below 180 to around 1000 ppm. Given that range, there's no particular cost to extending the Y axis down to 0. In general, humans are often able to extract the most information about the shape of a graph when it is scaled such that the absolute values of line segments are centered around 45 degrees (W.S. Cleveland, The Elements of Graphing Data [1994]; discussed in E. Tufte, Envisioning Information [1997], p. 25).
  6. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    GC, the majority of the EPA's "verbiage" as you describe it is an exhaustive recap of the myriad scientific details justifying policy. In other words, EPA is demonstrating a compelling case. What's really ironic and kind of funny in light of your word choice is that many more pages of what many of us think of when we use the term "verbiage" were donated by "skeptics," forcing the EPA to explain again the science behind the policy. The comments portion is an exhaustive encyclopedia of wrong thinking about climate science and science in general. I'm guessing you made that blunder because your odd attitude to government did not permit you to actually visit and read any of that information. Your other remark about EPA is just vacuous. I know you can do better; I've seen it.
  7. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    chriscanaris, unlike CO2 in the atmosphere, which mainly causes problems and so needs to be regulated, junk mail mainly leads to profits and jobs, and is already regulated : Direct marketing generates £205 billion in annual sales for UK Plc
  8. gallopingcamel at 02:03 AM on 6 October 2010
    Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Ned (#86), Great graph! I am sick of all those graphs that exaggerate effects by suppressing the zero. doug_bostrom (#63), I have to admit that you do your home work. The EPA probably imagines it has covered its vulnerable extremities with all that verbiage. I bet there is even more documentation to justify the mandatory addition of ethanol to our gasoline. EPA initiatives intended to improve the environment are often wrong headed and costly. The EPA's reputation will soon be on the level of the Department of Education. Come to think of it.....that is a good thing.
  9. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    @KL (149): then you agree the "flattening" was simply a temporary reduction likely caused by the PDO's cooling effect? "What Ned and archiesteel are trying to claim is that I don't understand climate responses to the AG radiative forcings." It would be hard to tell if you understand it or not since you seem to make a point of posting confusing (and confused) arguments. Of course the forcings (including solar) were not at "zero" in 1750 - the sun was shining, wasn't it? Similarly, there was already CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere, so the GHG forcing wasn't zero either - but that completely misses the point. The *increase* or *decrease* in the forcings is what counts.
    Moderator Response: Please follow KR's excellent example and move all further discussion of whether or not solar irradiance forcing is responsible for modern warming to the thread on Solar activity & climate: is the sun causing global warming?. Thanks.
  10. It's the sun
    Ken Lambert - To follow up on the theme of comparing anomalies, the discussion on CO2 is not the only driver of climate is quite useful, especially this chart: This starts from a baseline of 1880 (where the "zero" is set), showing deltas (changes) from those values. Note that solar irradiance deltas are trivial compared to greenhouse gases and aerosols. Once again, TSI is not the driver of recent warming. TSI changes simply do not match the temperature record.
  11. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Here's a graph showing CO2 levels over the past 800,000 years, compared to the current concentration (around 390 ppm) and the range of projected concentrations in 2100 based on the various IPCC scenarios: CO2 concentrations in the Dome C, Vostok, and Law Dome ice cores, for the past 800,000 years (purple line). Atmospheric concentrations 1959-present shown in orange line at right, with current (2010) value of 390 ppm indicated by dashed line. Red circles indicate range of projected CO2 concentrations in 2100. This might provide some context for the importance of regulating CO2 emissions. Failure to limit emissions would shift the chemistry of the atmosphere to a condition certainly not seen in the past 800,000 years and probably not for quite a long time before that.
  12. gallopingcamel at 01:10 AM on 6 October 2010
    Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future
    Many thanks for your thoughtful responses. My speculations in #73 are based on the link to the NOAA web site. However, I did take the time to download the actual data from NOAA and plot it using my spreadsheet program. You can do the same by clicking on the "Data" link. Here is the URL again: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/alley2000/alley2000.html Alley's data was published 10 years ago, so an update covering recent years would be helpful. That is one of the reasons for my planned visit to NCDC in Asheville in two weeks time. I don't expect to meet with Alley himself but there are several other people who worked on central Greenland. A related question for my Asheville visit concerns the "station drop off" at high latitudes. Given the "magnification" of warming and cooling effects at high latitudes, why have the number of reporting stations fallen? For example, the GHCN only includes Resolute and Alert in its database when it comes to the Canadian arctic and the situation is similar for northern Russia. It has been my experience that people will tell you many things in conversation that are not evident by reading their published papers, so I hope to be able to share some additional insights next month. With the above in mind do any of you have questions for the staff at NCDC?
    Moderator Response: Comments about station dropoff belong in a different thread. You know how to find it.
  13. Roger A. Wehage at 01:06 AM on 6 October 2010
    Three new studies illustrate significant risks and complications with geoengineering climate
    Fearing unfavorable public reaction, it is unlikely that the United States government will do anything significant to mitigate CO2 emissions in the foreseeable future. But they may spend hundreds of billions on star-wars type geoengineering ideas. Here is Representative Bart Gordon's Plan B for the Climate. Rep. Gordon said, "Within the next month, I will release a report titled Geoengineering the Climate: Research Needs and Strategies for International Coordination." Watch for that report for more details.
  14. It's the sun
    Ken Lambert - In regards to your ongoing insistence on unmeasured solar influence, I will point out that some of your issues with 1750 are based upon an inconsistent and incorrect view of "baseline". Forcings are set to zero starting at 1750 in many discussions as a point of reference for anomalies, not because of an equilibrium state. According to the historic and paleo reconstructions, without industrialization we should have seen 1750 onward continuing the Little Ice Age slope, and cooling (not equilibrium). By comparing TSI, CO2, aerosols, and other elements to the numbers at 1750 we can see how they've changed over time, and hence determine which changes are more relevant to the changing climate. But it's absolutely NOT a zero sum game starting from a blank slate equilibrium - which you for some reason keep insisting upon. And finally, given the historic record of changes in solar forcing, your insistence on "it's the sun" is not supported - there have not been changes in solar output consistent with the temperature record over the last 30-40 years. The sun is clearly not the base cause of global warming.
  15. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    Ken Lambert - I would strongly recommend taking this discussion, and your unsupported theory of unmeasured solar forcing, to the "It's the sun" thread, where it's appropriate. I have placed a reply on that thread.
    Moderator Response: Thank you.
  16. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    All the Ken-world viewers note this on significance periods: 14 years is better that 10 years is better than 8 years is better than 5 years and 1-2 years is not much good at all.
  17. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Sorry Moderator, I didn't see your comment while I was posting.
  18. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Ned: Ad hominem? No. I assume most people make the decisions they do in good faith. They sometimes get things wrong as no doubt you believe I have today. Unfortunately, as one who's had a fair bit to do with courts as an expert witness, I have a somewhat jaundiced view of our Anglo-Saxon adversarial court system even when judges do the best they can. However, judges are also constrained by the evidence placed before them. In this instance, I have no quarrel whatsoever with the Supreme Court's rulings - I think they had sound reasons for viewing anthropogenic CO2 as a pollutant. Doug: You used the word 'legislate.' Technically you're right - elected legislators legislate or make law while courts interpret legislation. In interpreting legislation, however, Courts create legal precedents (effectively clarifying law and in some instances giving it novel expression) which can only be overturned by specific legislation. Doug: I'm not speculating on your personality. Again, I always assume you are contributing here in good faith and with good will. However, I thought you were being inconsistent which all of us, myself included, inevitably sometimes are. I may be wrong, of course. JMurphy: I think this site is a superb forum for debate which is consistently stimulating and thought provoking. We could do with more such spaces. As for revenue suffered by firms from loss of advertising, I can count on my fingers the number of times I have purchased items based on unsolicited mail. The sheer inefficiency and waste for so little revenue with such substantial environmental impacts does upset me. Cutting down trees to turn them into pulp for advertising is certainly not my idea of a carbon sink. Using energy for unnecessary production of paper is not a good carbon sink. What's worse, you're probably right - much of that paper never goes into recycling but ends up in landfill. As for those who can't walk or cycle, Sydney has been crying out for thirty years for a better public transport system - no government of any stripe seems willing or able to take defective action. It'd be great to see fewer cars on our roads. Not no cars - just fewer cars and more efficient cars.
  19. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    CBD, thanks for the numbers update. That '07 'increase' probably reflects the winter levels transitioning from '06 to '07. We know what the summer of '07 did. For all practical purposes, the last chance of a 'recovery' ended that year. We are left with the prospect of being one bad (for the MultiYear ice) summer away from a late-summer/early-fall-navigable Arctic Ocean. With its attendant habitat loss for the walrus, seal and polar bear (the Arctic Fox is the poster-child for the forgotten species, but will probably endure best). Keep an eye on the MY ice advection out the Fram this winter. That, plus a strong dipole next year, will officially mark the dawn of a new era in international commerce...and species loss in the Arctic. As Doug & Riccardo delineate, the times they are a-changin'. Now. On our Watch. The Yooper
  20. New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
    Yooper, Ned, Archisteel, Adelady, kdkd et al: It must be bash Ken-world week. Clearly if you visited my posts on other threads - you all might glean that I have some reasonable understanding of the numbers and state of climate play. This is what I said to Yooper on 20SEP: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=56&&n=374#comments Comment #63 "The critical measurement is the TOA imbalance which nets all the heating and cooling forcings. Ref Fig 2.4 of AR4 which gives a total net anthropogenic forcing of +1.6W/sq.m. To this number is then added the climate responses which mainly consist of radiative cooling (from a raised Earth temperature of 0.75 degC as per S-B) of about -2.8W/sq.m and WV and Ice Albedo Feedback of about +2.1 W/sq.m. (Ref Dr Trenberth Fig 4 'Tracking the Earth's global energy) The sum is then +1.6 -2.8 +2.1 = +0.9W/sq.m All the heating and cooling forcings are acting in concert. S-B is emitting IR, Aerosols and clouds are reflecting incoming Solar heat, while CO2GHG are supposedly trapping Solar heat at lower levels (the mechanism is more correctly slowing down the transfer rather than 'trapping' heat) which tends to raise the equilibrium temperature as the analogy of a better insulator increases the T1-T2 temperature difference for a given heat flux transferred. What is certain is that CO2GHG forcing (currently claimed at about 1.6W/sq.m) is logarithmic with CO2 concentration, and S-B radiative cooling is exponential (proportional to T^4). Where these forcings and the others cross is where the forcing imbalance is zeroed and the new equilibrium temperature approached. The CO2GHG theory hangs on the interaction of WV and CO2 in the atmosphere and what will be the surface temperature rise for a unit rise in the IR emitting temperature of the Earth as seen from space." end quote What Ned and archiesteel are trying to claim is that I don't understand climate responses to the AG radiative forcings. The point I am making about Solar forcing and energy over time is that the components of the Radiative forcing (Fig 2.4 IPCC AR4) are separated for analysis and quantification, but they are the INSTANTANEOUS energy flux (power) forcings in W/sq.m circa AD2005. There is a history over time for these forcings going back to the pre-industrial 'zero' date of AD1750. There will be a curve for each and the area under that curve represents the total energy contributed by each. Simultaneously there are the climate response forcings which also have their curves going back wrt time ie: "which mainly consist of radiative cooling (from a raised Earth temperature of 0.75 degC as per S-B) of about -2.8W/sq.m and WV and Ice Albedo Feedback of about +2.1 W/sq.m. (Ref Dr Trenberth Fig 4 'Tracking the Earth's global energy)" Again these are AD2005 numbers for the instantaneous value of the response forcings. Summing ALL the curves should give a combined effect of a composite curve over time, the area under which represents the total of the energy absorbed or lost to the earth system at any point in time since AD1750. Temperature (with appropriate lags) should in theory follow this time integral. Now, where Ned does not 'get it' is that when looking at the Solar forcing COMPONENT of the +1.6W/sq.m of net AG forcings, my contention is that this is underestimated if the Solar forcing of the Earth was not 'zero' in 1750, because all the other AG forcings were 'zero' as far as we know. If CO2GHG forcing was not zero in 1750, the same argument would apply to its area under the forcing curve. It would also be underestimated. If you disagree with the methodology of looking at each COMPONENT AG radiative and Solar forcing and then summing them (and their time history curves), because they in reality all acted in concert together with climate response forcings to produce the net result; then you must disagree with the IPCC method and that of Hansen, Dr Trenberth et al, who explicitly use this method to separate out the components. Without this separation - no theroetical analysis of the relative value of each AG forcing could have been made and all we would know is that the current TOA imbalance (CERES April 2010) is +6.4W/sq.m which would indeed cause us all to fry in hell. A correction back to 0.9W/sq.m would be impossible without the theroetical analysis of the components and their apparent magnitudes.
  21. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    "Supreme" Court. Does this word tell you something, chriscanaris?
    Moderator Response: Please, everybody, no more on the Supreme Court.
  22. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    CBDunkerson, 2+ years old ice is the green area and it's still decreasing after 2007. What strikes me is the huge amount of >2 years ice that melted away this summer, continuing the decrease started in 2007. And, according to NSIDC, the oldest sea ice virtually disappeared.
  23. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    CBD, I was looking at the bit of the graph where the 1-2YO (blue slice) ice nearly vanished; I think I didn't make myself clear. What I find striking is how nearly constant that constituent has been over the time span of the graph, only to go through the sharp drop in '07 leading to '08. Smacks of something changing a lot, quickly.
  24. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    chriscanaris wrote : "I could think of far better substitutes for the Supreme Court. Robust and honest debate conducted in a spirit of mutual respect. Practical actions such as not stuffing my mail box each day with a mass of advertising which goes straight into recycling thus saving a few forests - good carbon sinks. Walking or cycling to and from work." Where would such a debate take place ? Why should firms suffer the loss of income gained from that advertising ? Where are they going to get the replacement income from ? How many people actually recycle that advertising ? What is a "good carbon sink" and where might they be put ? What about those who can't walk or cycle to work ?
  25. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Oops, I'm in nearly complete disagreement with you, Chris, in particular with your speculation on my comfort with and commitment to our system of government. Presumably you're upset with my employment of the word "happily." It sounds as though you've misconstrued my happiness, or I communicated it poorly. Serves me right for daring to use such an emotional adjective, eh? Also, you don't agree with me that courts can't legislate physics. I didn't say that, and in any case courts don't legislate. As you've volunteered to speculate on my personality, I'll offer in return that your writing is better when it does not sound so eager. Getting back to the matter at hand, your reply was arranged around abstract politics largely to the exclusion of the facts being discussed in this thread. If you want to continue down that path here I won't be able to follow you. Have at it if you must.
  26. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    PIOMAS also updated... September 2010 average ice volume of 4,000 km^3. Which is way down from the previous record low of 5,800 km^3 in September 2009. Obviously if that rate continued the ice would all be gone within three years. Even the average rate over the past ten years has been -1000 km^3 per year, so four more years at that rate. So yeah, Maslowski's projection (2016 +/- 3 years to nearly ice free) is looking pretty good. Indeed, these numbers suggest it was conservative. However, NSIDC is still saying 20 to 30 years... presumably based on the extent trend, which is much less pronounced than the volume trend. We'll know within a couple of years which is going to be the ultimate determinant. My money is on volume. Doug, actually as I read the chart the 2+ year ice percentage increased slightly in 2007. The first sharp dip shown is for Sept 2008, then a smaller one for Sept 2009, and now a third even smaller dip for Sept 2010. This is consistent with ice volume having declined since 2007 while extent increased slightly. The fact that these are percentages also changes how we should look at them somewhat... 55% of the 4.3 September 2007 extent is still more than 15% of the 4.8 September 2010 extent, but not as much more as the percentages alone suggest.
  27. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    chriscanaris tries to find fault with the US Supreme Court's decision that yes, the US EPA has the authority to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. While I normally find his comments enlightening and thought-provoking, this one seems to be a bit of an exception. Suggesting that the Court's clearly objectionable 1857 Dredd Scott decision somehow casts doubt on its judgment in the current case would seem to be the perfect example of argumentum ad hominem. In fact, it's even worse than the normal employment of ad hominem insofar as the individuals on the current USSC had nothing to do with the Dredd Scott decision. It's also worth considering that, if you look at US history, the constituency whose interests Taney et al. were promoting (conservative southern whites) is the same core constituency that the opponents of emissions regulation are serving. A map of opposition to government meddling in slavery in 1857 would look a lot like a map of opposition to regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 (I'm not trying to suggest that "AGW skeptics" are somehow equivalent to plantation owners, merely pointing out how spectacularly poor chriscanaris's analogy is.)
  28. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    CBDunkerson #74 "An increase in human population increases the amount of carbon cycling through humans... but not the total amount of carbon in active circulation." This is correct. Therefore, had alterative non-combustion forms of energy been harnessed for the entire Industrial Revolution (if this were even possible), and if the population somehow still grew as it did, then there would be less CO2 in the atmosphere since it would have been sequestered by the growth pattern, and I assume the world would be cooler according to AGW. With a cooling world, farming would be hampered some and therefore less prone to growth. Again, its very hard to imagine how heavy industries could have emerged historically without fossil fuels (nearly impossible even with current technologies, which of course did not exist). At any rate, my point was that fossil fuels have primed the system, and the carbon is out there. Not only "out there", but as hard as it may be to accept, and quite ironic, our own bodies contain this "anthropogenic" carbon.
    Moderator Response: Please discuss the role of human metabolism in Earth's climate at the "Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?" thread.
  29. An underwater hockey stick
    doug_bostrom wrote : "JMurphy JohnD's email quote appears to been sourced here. It's worth reading the whole thing, a familiar refrain as we've yet again been treated to a rhetorically expedient selection. There's some discussion here further indicating things were not as simple as they've been portrayed." Ah, so, as usual, what johnd leaves out is more important than what he writes ! Interesting as to how the models are all recognised as providing output that cannot be truly trusted in advance, and that some are better than others at different times, predictions, etc. What a surprise...not, and what a surprise that a so-called skeptic would cherry-pick...not ! It's also interesting to remember that the source you gave was also involved in claims (last year ?) that 'Japanese scientists disbelieve AGW' - it all went back to a similar email exchange at JAMSTEC that involved a group of people in discussion. Amazingly, the words then were cherry-picked to determine a belief very different than what was actually contained in the whole exchange. Well done for going to the trouble to find the original - something one rarely gets from so-called skeptics, unsurprisingly.
  30. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    #70:"Breathing does increase CO2 levels in direct proportion to the increase in population. " That is provably false. US population increased in 2009, yet CO2 emissions decreased. See the breathing thread for a reference.
  31. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Doug, the Court in Dredd Scott looked at what seemed equally mundane questions to many at the time in question - did it have the requisite jurisdiction, could citizens be deprived of their property, and the like. I agree with you 100% that a Court can't legislate on the laws of physics. I'm sure you're every bit as unhappy as I am about Cuccinelli's efforts. However, you seem to be happy to involve the Courts when you happen to agree with a specific outcome. I could think of far better substitutes for the Supreme Court. Robust and honest debate conducted in a spirit of mutual respect. Practical actions such as not stuffing my mail box each day with a mass of advertising which goes straight into recycling thus saving a few forests - good carbon sinks. Walking or cycling to and from work. I'm sure you could come up with a lengthy list of other useful interventions which carry minimal cost but which if everyone did them would have substantial impacts.
  32. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    Re: Agnostic (35) The melt-curve needed to hit 1+ meter of SLR by 2050 will also deliver 3+ by 2100. Not saying it will happen, or not. Just pointing out the obvious. BTW, that jibes with Hansen's latest (catastrophic instabilities in the PIG, already underway, triggers a 5+ meter SLR deglaciation of the WAIS by 2100). If I wasn't half-asleep (and lazy) right now I'd link it. Google Hansen 2008. Think that's it. The Yooper
  33. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Chris in this case we're not looking at an issue freighted with mutating, evolving attitudes to race relations, etc., deep questions of ethics or morality. The Supreme Court was confronted with facts of science posed against facts of existing law and regulation; the Court was asked to determine if the matter of C02 was within the purview of the Clean Air Act. It was a pretty mundane decision compared to Brown vs. Board of Education etc. Regarding the sometimes spotty record of the Supreme Court, perfect it isn't but there's no substitute, it's the destination for questions turning on what folks see as fine points of law. We can expect for those unhappy with the disposition of facts to mount an effort to change those facts by changing the law. They may well be able to change the facts of the law, the real trouble is they cannot legislate physics.
  34. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    If 2011 sees the summer development of the Arctic DiPole, strong possibility of open water at the pole by melt season's end. Had there been favorable weather in July it could have happened this year. Hope the pole cams float. Maslowski's looking pretty good, too. The Yooper
  35. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    So, we'll see the final, really wild seasonal variations when/if that 1-2 year old ice is gone. What's interesting is that it's held fairly steady overall during the period shown, but was nearly obliterated in the famous '07 slice. I suppose that feature may show as an early harbinger once the data is extended, an early wiggle toward the final outcome. I must say, Serreze's prognostications look to be right on track.
  36. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    I detect a small problem in turning to the US Supreme Court as an arbiter on these issues. The Court has a chequered record: See the Dredd Scott decision, which had momentous consequences. Courts deal with the law but don't do a very good job of science and morality.
  37. Arctic sea ice... take 2
    There is some updated information, consistent with the PIOMAS results in the article, on Arctic sea ice age from the NSIDC; "At the end of the summer 2010, under 15% of the ice remaining the Arctic was more than two years old, compared to 50 to 60% during the 1980s. There is virtually none of the oldest (at least five years old) ice remaining in the Arctic (less than 60,000 square kilometers [23,000 square miles] compared to 2 million square kilometers [722,000 square miles] during the 1980s)."
  38. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    RSVP #70: "Breathing does increase CO2 levels in direct proportion to the increase in population." An increase in human population increases the amount of carbon cycling through humans... but not the total amount of carbon in active circulation. It can't. There is no possible way that we could exhale more carbon than we take in... unless you are arguing that human beings spontaneously generate carbon atoms. Indeed, since our bodies are partially composed of carbon and most humans bury their dead, living humans are a carbon sink on the decadal scale and dead humans a carbon sink on the millenial scale. So far as our bodies alone are concerned humans are a net carbon sink. Thus, no... the fact that excessive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (and thus carbonic acid in the oceans) constitute pollution (i.e. are harmful to the environment) does not mean that the EPA is going to be able to order executions. Setting aside the sheer insanity of the claim... it simply wouldn't accomplish anything. It is human industry which is causing rising atmospheric CO2 levels... digging up carbon which has been stored away in fossil fuels for millions of years and reintroducing it to active circulation.
  39. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    17, hadfield: The statement you are trying to promote is different from what I am trying to do. Sorry.
  40. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Exactly, RSVP, it's a global problem, eyes are on the U.S. to show a serious willingness to get a grip on this problem, a hurdle for international accord. Our current batch of Senators for various reasons found themselves unable to follow the lead of the President and House and actually finish a specific response to C02 as a unique policy challenge. Happily, a little over 35 years ago a different President and Congress promulgated legislation that addresses the issue, as the EPA has proposed and the Supreme Court has affirmed. The EPA reflects durable wisdom and foresight encapsulated in law. It all has quite a bit to do with politics. We're not supposed to talk about politics here, but this particular thread of discussion is about policy, and policy in the United States is the sausage emerging from legislative politics. By the way, without having read the EPA's justification for tackling C02 there's no way anybody's going to produce usefully informed specific comment on this. Insightful generalities about the boundaries of the term "pollution," maybe, productive criticism of the EPA, no.
  41. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    Breathing does increase CO2 in direct proportion to the population. And every mammal sequesters some carbon in the carbon-based life form tissues. It's a circular argument. Either we eat carbon containing life forms and release CO2 rather than allowing them just to die, decay and release CO2. Or parts of some plants sequester more CO2 in their structures because we don't harvest them as an alternative to us eating some plant parts and sequestering carbon in our bodies.
  42. What constitutes 'safe' global warming?
    Thanks John for the timely warning. A temperature rise of 2 degrees is definitely not safe, at least not in the long term. Sea-level rise is the elephant in the room. The IPCC projections of less than one metre are based mostly on thermal expansion of the ocean, as the rate of breakup of the ice sheets is very difficult to model. Hansen has stated that “Proxy measures of CO2 amount and climate simulations consistent with empirical data on climate sensitivity both indicate that atmospheric CO2 amount when an ice sheet first formed on Antarctica (34–35 million years before present) was probably only 400–600 ppm" (Hansen and Sato, 2007b). Elsewhere he writes “equilibrium sea level rise for today’s 385 ppm CO2 (2008) is at least several meters, judging from paleoclimate history" If that is so then the CO2 concentration we are tracking to reach in this century is sufficient to eventually melt most of the ice in Greenland and West Antarctica. (East Antarctica may be somewhat safer as the ice sheet has increased the altitude.) The only consolation in this grim scenario is that the thermal inertia of the ice sheets is apparently longer than the thermal inertia of the upper layers of the ocean. In my post on this site titled "Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect", I estimated 40 years as the time for global warming, responding to a step increase in forcing, to reach 1 – 1/e = 63.2% of its final equilibrium value. The sea level rise for the last interglacial, which John quotes as 6.6 to 9.4 metres higher than current sea level, is the equilibrium sea level rise. I expect a 2 degree warming will produce a rise of 2 or more metres by the end of this century, with the remainder being reached some centuries later. What we do know from paleoclimate history is that if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of the world's great cities will eventually be inundated. That is why the task facing mankind is not just to quickly move to a zero carbon economy. We will also need to extract the bulk of the CO2 emitted from 1750 up till now. That will require either carbon sequestration on an industrial scale, or geo-engineering. Both these solutions will involve decisions we make as a species, not as competing peoples. If sufficient CO2 can be removed this century, we can limit the sea level rise even if global warming temporarily reaches 2+ degrees. I live on the island of Tasmania. The first inhabitants of the island arrived during the last ice age. They did not arrive by boat. They were able to walk across 300 km of sea floor because the sea level was 120 metres lower than it is today. I wish our politicians could comprehend that as they push temperatures and sea level in the other direction!
  43. An underwater hockey stick
    Joe Blog #75: You say that you have the data showing that the surface temp anomaly is less than the ~400 m ocean temp anomaly for the Gulf of St. Lawrence... please show it. Given that most of the area around the North Pole has warmed more than 3 C I doubt your claim is correct. On your theory that ocean temperature anomalies in the area are more due to currents than warming directly at that location I might normally agree with you (and point out that global warming is... global, and thus would also have warmed the waters carried in by the current), but... this is the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is blocked by several land masses which logically should prevent any major ocean currents from running through the area. That said... if an ocean current IS running through the Gulf it would have to be an offshoot of the Labrador current which comes down from the Arctic and hugs the coast all along the possible entrances to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Arctic is, as noted above, the region which has experienced the greatest temperature anomalies due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. So even if you are right about the water temperature anomaly being due to currents... it's right back to AGW again.
  44. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    As the level of CO2 is planetary, this issue at any rate can only be dealt with seriously via international accords.
  45. Billions of Blow Dryers: Some Missing Heat Returns to Haunt Us
    There is a document explaining the changes shown in Charlie A's #75 at the NODC URL he provides. The top level summary from that document is; "1. Changes due to data additions and data quality control, both at NODC and by originators. Substantial quality control has been carried out by the Argo community on the profiling floats, mainly to correct pressure offsets. A substantial amount of data for recent years has been added to the analysis. 2. Changes due to switch of our base climatology. The website and 2009 paper used an interim (L09) climatology (between WOA05 and WOA09) incorporating XBT corrections and a mean of five decadal climatologies to remove temporal bias. These changes were formally completed with additional data and quality control in WOA09. 3. Changes due to revised XBT bias calculations. With additional XBT and CTD data, the bias calculations were improved. This is an ongoing process, but as we receive less new data from earlier time periods, this recalculation will mostly affect more recent years." These show how many calculations and assumptions go into the OHC estimates and thus further highlight why it is so ridiculous to point to a five year 'trend' in these values as evidence of anything. We can tell that the long term trend is increasing, but making claims based on fine detail is just irresponsible. Note that the new updates don't include any attempt to factor in the deep ocean warming identified by Purkey & Johnson in the paper discussed above. So the NEW results are still not 'perfect'... as also evidenced by the comments about the need for further corrections in the explanation of the changes.
  46. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    CBDunkerson #69: You really can't do this math? Seriously? Petrolium has placed the carbon equilibrium as sequestered in all living things (including man) beyond its "natural" origin. Breathing does increase CO2 levels in direct proportion to the increase in population.
  47. Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
    RSVP #68: You really can't do this math? Seriously? Prior article: Breathing does not increase atmospheric CO2 levels because all carbon exhaled into the atmosphere came FROM the atmosphere in the first place. Basically, the human body recycles CO2. Current article: Something becomes a pollutant when the level of it in the environment increases to the point where it becomes harmful. Ergo... breathing is not causing CO2 to become a pollutant and there is no reason to regulate it... despite obnoxious fear mongering, on the level of 'death panels', nonsense to the contrary.
  48. We're heading into an ice age
    Tom Loeber, there was no "widespread cold in the northern hemisphere over the last couple of years", just as there has been no "widespread record cold" over the southern hemisphere more recently. You would save yourself a lot of bother if you look into the facts and figures of these situations, rather than rely on exaggerated and over-the-top headlines, especially those from the likes of ICECAP.COM.
  49. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    scaddenp at 10:40 AM, I'm not sure what you are getting at, or where you are coming from for that matter. Please explain.
  50. Uncertain Times at the Royal Society?
    gallopingcamel. Ah, I'm glad you said that! There are indeed sharp upturns in temp throughout the record, and all were natural. You're right, we're told that this time, this time, it is man-made (and we have a suitable cause). What intruiges me when I look at the graph of modern temps is indeed THAT sharp uptick. Would you agree that it would fit better if the temp slowly rose up, rather than it being quite sharp?

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