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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 108801 to 108850:

  1. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    #130 Riccardo at 20:33 PM on 28 September, 2010 you treatment assume a condensed phase behaviour No, it does not. Water vapor is a gas, transparent in the visible portion of the spectrum (with some absorption lines in the near IR though) and lots of absorption in thermal IR, even in the so called "atmospheric window" between 8 and 14 μm (see the slightly mysterious "water vapor continuum"). In its gas (a.k.a. "vapor") phase water is a perfectly legitimate GHG quite independent of its condensed phase ("cloud" or "fog") behavior. It is its atmospheric distribution which is not independent of the fact it can have multiple (gas, fluid, solid) phases under ordinary meteorologic conditions. As soon as a parcel of air gets saturated (due to adiabatic cooling) and precipitation is formed, the air exiting at cloud top is left with very low specific humidity (and high potential temperature). As it enters a cloud free region, it starts to cool radiatively to space, descending slowly. In this process it can get turbulently mixed with other air parcels with different specific humidities, but due to multi-scale properties of turbulent 3D flows this mixing seldom have the chance to complete its job, that is, before homogenization could get down to the molecular level, another saturation episode occurs, resetting the clock once again. Therefore water vapor (gas phase) distribution is very far from being uniform most of the time and under most meteorologic conditions, even under clear skies. So average specific humidity alone can never tell the whole story of its radiative properties, much less column integrated water content. Humidity distribution above the boundary layer is pretty much decoupled from surface temperatures below, reflecting history of air masses involved.
  2. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    Can someone explain the meaning of the error bars in the graph. The various, almost simultaneous, estimates of mass loss by the Grace system have relatively small error bars, but many of them are non-overlapping. It seems that the error bars reflect only statistical sampling error and grossly underestimate the true potential error of the measurements.
  3. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Berényi Péter, to add to my previous comment, absorption coefficient of water is relatively high throughout the infrared and all light is fully absorbed in a few tens of microns. Just a few droplets in the water column will suffice to block all the outgoing radiation.
  4. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Roger A. Wehage #43 God gave us our intelligence. It's up to us to use it.
  5. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    They took exception to your use of the word 'denier'. I would suggest, given the oeuvre of Johns blog, that people writing the posts should be hypersensitive to the sensibilities of the 'other side of the mirror' so as not to afford them opertunities to ignore the content and focus on the style.
  6. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    Argus (d) Fortunately rather than being ignorant and subject to argument by arbitrary assertion, we can use facts to check our understanding of the world.
  7. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Berényi Péter you treatment assume a condensed phase behaviour. As I said before, unless you call water vapour micron size liquid droplets it does not apply. Probably it's just a misunderstanding, you include clouds under the term water vapour. In this case, I agree with you, distribution does matter. By the way, it's included in any model.
  8. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    #7 cynicus I hadn't seen Luthcke et al 2007, thanks for that. In my view it reinforces the need to point out and quantify the uncertainties rather than unintentionally marginalise them.
  9. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    Whether the rate of loss is increasing is an important issue. Don't forget this article claims that "that these losses have drastically increased since the year 2000" Velicogna et al (2009) concluded that the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009. However, Wu et al (2010) cite mass losses between 2002 and 2008 of 104 +/- 23 Gt/yr which would suggest that there is little evidence in the data that the rate of melt has been increasing. I suggest it won't be long before someone jumps all over the way this article has summarized the issue.
  10. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    #3 Falcon, we reference the same paper but we disagree in details: 1. I have not found any reference that the paper disputes acceleration of the losses. 2. The paper does not "less then half" all other GRACE-based estimates: Luthcke et al 2007 used GRACE data and applied a method with greater spatial and temporal resolution to come up with -101 Gt/yr between 2003 and 2005 which seems to correlate perfectly with the Wu et al paper. Perhaps Luthcke has found a way around the isostatic rebound and mass redistribution using the greater spatial and temporal resolution. It sounds plausible to me but I'm not qualified to judge that.
  11. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    I read (and re-read) this post but I don't understand what has Anthony and the "skeptic" community so upset about it. It seems pretty bland and light-hearted; certainly not a hit piece. Maybe the promotion of fact-based sources for information about climate change (many of which are run by scientists) is what is so threatening? The post itself obviously isn't peer reviewed (nor is any post on any blog) but most of the science covered in these blogs/outlets certainly is. The arguments and evidence in every one of these sources is based on extensive peer-reveiwed science and the citations/sources are very clear. Yes, I am a different John, and to be totally clear on who I am and what my scientific credentials are, where my funding comes from, etc., go here
  12. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    Too early to say really. The writers of the earlier papers based on GRACE data believe they got the isostatic rebound correct. A new paper by Wu suggests it is a larger factor. Frankly, the jury is still out. One issue with the Wu analysis is that if significantly less ice has melted than previously thought then we have a bigger problem explaining the observed sea level rise. Any decrease in ice loss must be made up by increased expansion due to heating. In any case, given that they confirm the increasing rate of ice loss the magnitude isn't really a major issue... the rate has been doubling every few years, so if the current rate is half what had been thought then we'd still be back up to the previously estimated rate within the decade. The long term difference is negligible.
  13. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    I think it should be noted that the mass balance estimates based on GRACE might be a bit exaggerated in some literature (Velicogna et al 2009 and Chen et al 2009). The linked paper argues that redistribution of the mass of the ice loss around the globe and isostatic rebound due to unloading is not fully accounted for in a number of papers which use GRACE data. However, while this papers disputes the magnitude of the loss in some literature, it does not dispute the acceleration of the loss. (A more elaborate summary is here.)
  14. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    The graphs probably need to be updated, incorrect accounting for post glacial rebound is probably doubling the figures given there!
  15. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    cruzn246 #36: As usual, you seem to be basing your conclusions on fiction. "The carbon data is all over the place clearly showing the Little ice age big time, but hockey stick Mann claims it wasn't a NA event. Please." Mann doesn't say that the LIA was a non event. It is very clearly evident in the Mann 2008 reconstruction; "WHY? Are they afraid to show what happened with carbon 14 after that? I would say yes." Congratulations, your official wacky conspiracy theorist tin foil hat is in the mail. Carbon 14 ratio was a reasonable proxy for solar irradiance prior to the point that we started putting tons of fossil carbon into the atmosphere and releasing bursts of radiation with atomic explosions. Of course, we've been able to measure solar irradiance directly for decades so we don't need proxies any more. We've been in a pronounced solar minimum for a few decades now... while temperatures have been going through the roof. "I know this is not a carbon 14 measure, but this closely follows the same of pattern carbon 14 readings." Ummm... what? They aren't even close. Total atmospheric carbon levels barely changed at all between 1000 AD and 1800 AD while Carbon 14 ratio was going up and down like a roller coaster along with TSI. Since then total atmospheric CO2 has risen at a steadily increasing rate while Carbon 14 has continued to roller coaster.
  16. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    The world needs fixing fast, and God isn't helping.
  17. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    The article fails to mention that a new paper, Wu et al. (2010), has concluded that that losses have not in fact accelerated as claimed. Although the ice-sheets are losing mass, the losses estimated by the authors represent less than half of the other GRACE-based estimates, which undermine the collusions the four papers cited in Wray's article. Wu et al. conclude that "a significant revision of the present estimates of glacial isostatic adjustments and land-ocean water exchange is required". Reference: Wu et al (2010) "Simultaneous estimation of global present-day water transport and glacial isostatic adjustment" Nature Geoscience 3, 642 - 646 (2010)doi:10.1038/ngeo938 (Link to www.nature.com)
  18. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    archiesteel #125 Ned and I did some forensics on BP's failed statistical analysis (i.e. would get him a fail grade as a first year university assignment) in this thread. We determined that the analysis suggested that if his estimate of the urban heat island effect was reasonable (and it's far more likely to be an overestimate - but we can't say if it is or by how much because he hasn't released his methodology) then his estimate for climate sensitivity is bang-on 3 degrees Celsius once corrected for the urban heat island effect. Which is entirely consistent with the mainstream climate science estimate. BP's current tangent appears to be a variant of the 'models are inaccurate' argument. It seems to me to be without merit as it uses the "if we can't know everything then we know nothing fallacy.
  19. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    #127 Riccardo at 16:44 PM on 28 September, 2010 So, although it is indeed relevant for clouds (fractal or not), it's not for water vapour. In case of water vapor radiative properties in the thermal IR range it is not scattering, but absorption and emission. Let's consider a thin horizontal slab of air loaded with a fixed quantity of some "greenhouse gas" (one which has a nonzero absorptivity in thermal IR). For the sake of simplicity let's suppose absorptivity is independent of frequency in this long wave range (the stuff is "grey" here). Let molar density of this GHG along the surface of slab be d(x) where x is any point on the surface of the slab, expressed in mole/m2 units. Integral of d for the entire surface is clearly the total quantity of stuff, so it is constant as it is said before. However, otherwise d is allowed to vary along the surface. Opacity at point x is clearly 1-e-c·d(x) with some positive constant c. If |c·d(x)| is small everywhere (absorptivity of stuff is not too high and/or the slab is thin), second order approximation of it is c·d(x)-1/2·c2·d2(x). Overall specific opacity of the slab can be calculated by integrating this expression along the entire surface and dividing by area. Integral of first term being proportional to average molar density, as long as the second term is negligible, you are right, only the quantity of stuff counts, not fine details of its distribution. However, as soon as second moment of d gets significant (distribution is "rough"), it is no longer true. You can also see that integral of the second term is always positive, therefore if it's got subtracted from integral of the first one, specific opacity is always decreasing. It's also possible that second order approximation is not good enough. In this case higher moments of distribution also come into play. Specific opacity is a nonlinear (concave) function of molar density, so departures from uniform distribution tend to decrease opacity. For well mixed GHGs it is not an issue, but water vapor is not one of them.
  20. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    No Argus. It's fortunate that we live in the times that we do with all the advantages of scientific instruments unimaginable to earlier generations. It's worth reminding ourselves of that from time to time. It's not just dentistry and antibiotics that make this a good time for us. There's a whole infrastructure of scientific endeavour which we don't bother to look at most of the time. When we need it, it's there.
  21. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    "Fortunately we have empirical observations against which we can test these requirements." Somehow I stopped to think about the connotation of this sentence from the prolog. Question: Why is the word 'fortunately' appropriate in this context? (a) Because it is such a joy to be able to 'debunk' all skeptic arguments? (b) Because it would be terrible if somebody holding opinions other than ours would ever be right, plus it would be so embarassing if main stream climate scientists were ever wrong?? (c) Because if our climate was governed by outer space, there would be nothing we could do about it - now, all we have to do is stop burning coal and oil? (d) Because of other reason (please specify!) (Check one)
  22. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    Hilariously, Anthony Watts uses the above guest post as an example of John Cook 'embarassing' himself. Watts 1. Uses a misquote of Mr Cook from Sourcewatch to impune John's scientific credentials. A quick Google would have revealed that the SW quote was wrong or out of date. Each of his points is quickly debunked by a search of SS. Quality journalism! 2. Posts a link to the wrong article - he wanted to link to New Scientist on solar, he linked to Nature on Ocean Cycles. 3. From the tone of the original article it is clear he believed the guest post was by John Cook, he later resiles from this once it is pointed out, harrumphing instead about blog owners being responsible for their content. 4. Complains that this guest news roundup is not 'peer-reviewed science'. Straw Man, the science here IS peer-reviewed, nobody claims or expects news and editorial to pass a review process. 5. Doesn't like the word 'denier'. Ho hum. Some people, not me you understand, might find the hilarious string of gaffes rather more embarrassing to the gaffee than his target......
  23. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    I believe so, check the following links from the post - Khan et al 2010, and the paper cited in the graphic caption, Jiang 2010.
  24. Positive feedback means runaway warming
    hadfield: This article is intended to illustrate a mathematical fact, not to describe the dynamics of the real atmosphere. Please read the Note that has been there from the beginning: "Note: This model incorporates a number of features of the actual feedback mechanism for the enhanced greenhouse effect, in particular the dependence of radiative forcing on the logarithm of CO2. However, it is definitely not intended as a full model for the effect. It's only intended to illustrate the point that there is no contradiction for a system to have positive feedback, while maintaining self-limiting behavior. "
  25. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Berényi Péter, the fractal structure (if any) is irrelevant as far as absorption and scattering are concerned. The different scattering properties of a uniform vs an unven distribution of particles is due to a concentration effect which, at some point, starts to produce multiple scattering. Even an uniform distribution may produce multiple scattering if concetrated enough. So, although it is indeed relevant for clouds (fractal or not), it's not for water vapour. Unless you call water vapour micron size water droplets.
  26. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    As I stated, my comments about what the natural trend should be were from 1975 to now. However the figure I referenced shows the natural forcing from 1900. If you are trying a "its the sun" argument, argue it in the right place but also note all the detail there about it isnt. You wont find a C14 past 1950 that can tell you anything about solar - the atmospheric nuclear test regime overprints everything else, but now we have direct measurement of TSI anyway. Please try to stick to peer-reviewed science - that way you avoid the people who trying to fool you.
  27. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Daniel Bailey @ 41 '...that does not preclude our being able to destroy the creation in the act of subduing it. Which we are busily engaged in doing.' As we have also been doing to one another since we first arrived on this planet. I've no argument on that one with you, Daniel.
  28. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Re: chriscanaris (39) I believe in a loving God who made creation according to ordered principles and logic; a God who also endowed us with the free will to choose to overcome His creation and subdue it. However, that does not preclude our being able to destroy the creation in the act of subduing it. Which we are busily engaged in doing. The dark side of the free will thingy: You can't always get what you want. The Yooper
  29. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    snapple #12 "There is an important article in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty about how the Russian energy companies are projecting their political power into Europe and "cultivating" politicians who will serve them. " What is the difference between that and multi-national oil companies (like BP) buying support in the US Congress?
  30. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    #122 Riccardo at 08:18 AM on 28 September, 2010 The vertical distribution of clouds does matter, but it's another story. Water vapour concentration rapidly falls with altitude anyway. It's the same story. General shape of clouds is a fractal right because distribution of water vapor was like this in the first place before condensation started. It is this way in both lateral and vertical directions. If opacity is distributed unevenly in a medium, in most cases transparency is increased. You can see through a lattice, but can't do the same with a plate.
  31. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    @BP, you have not presented a convincing case that climate sensitivity is lower than 3C. There is no strong indication that soot on snow, the UHI effect or ocean redistribution cycles are responsible for a significant temperature change (in fact, the UHI effect has tended to introduce a *cold* bias, not a warm one). Furthermore, you have repeatedly failed to address the criticism regarding your statistical analysis on a different thread. Until you at least attempt to clear your name, I cannot take anything you say at face value - if you can't admit making a mistake, then we can't assume that *any* of your analyses are correct.
  32. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    @cruzn246: "Well, with Venus you have a completely different situation. It's like comparing apples and oranges. That type of equilibrium, static, is next to impossible in our atmosphere system . We have what is called a dynamic equilibrium." Okay, now it's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about. "I'll ask you the question that Tom doesn't seem to want to answer. Naturally, without anthropogenic influence, should we be heating up or cooling now?" Cooling, most probably. The fact temperatures are still increasing tells you how large the anthropogenic influence is. "The funny thing is it really took off in the latter part of the 19th century. that pretty much coincides with the warm-up from that time till the mid 40s. It says the graph stops in 1950. WHY? Are they afraid to show what happened with carbon 14 after that? I would say yes." Are we back to conspiracy theories, now? The evil scientists are hiding the data, is that it? "I know this is not a carbon 14 measure" In other words, it is completely irrelevant. You just wanted to add a graph to give your innocuous post some credibility.
  33. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Phila @ 37: 'Presumably, if you believe in "a loving God," you also believe in a God who gave us the ability to make intelligent decisions based on what science tells us about the world, and to take responsibility for our actions.' I absolutely concur. And 'scientism' represents human pride and its refusal to acknowledge our limitations as a species to which so many readers have eloquently alluded on this thread. 'Scientism' is not science any more than religiosity is religion.
  34. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    #118 KR at 06:32 AM on 28 September, 2010 modelled and empirical evidence indicates that the actual climate sensitivity is ~3°C for a doubling of CO2 It would be so if models would handle atmospheric water and turbulence properly (they don't) and if all the warming measured during the last several decades would be due to GHGs and none to soot on snow, UHI or ocean heat redistribution cycles. your increased inhomogeneity means lower local entropy, and is not a natural direction for the system to move in. Look again. It is not a closed system, but an open one, meaning there is a steady flow of energy through it. In such systems maximum entropy production is equivalent to minimum entropy contents under a wide range of conditions. Just consider the human body. You'll notice inhomogeneity in it on all scales, still, it is quite natural. At least as long as there is a steady flow of free energy through the system coupled to a high entropy production rate. Should the guy be starved to death or get suffocated though, homogenization of both body temperature and structure kicks in immediately.
  35. Is Greenland losing ice? (psst, the answer is yes, at an accelerating rate)
    i believe that there has been an update to the grace data, due to incorrect calibration for continential rebound... is this post with the updated data?
  36. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    Folks, click on the basic tab above and look at the charts in the Limited History section. The carbon data is all over the place clearly showing the Little ice age big time, but hockey stick Mann claims it wasn't a NA event. Please. Note another thing. The LAST part of that carbon chart shows the highest levels of carbon 14! The funny thing is it really took off in the latter part of the 19th century. that pretty much coincides with the warm-up from that time till the mid 40s. It says the graph stops in 1950. WHY? Are they afraid to show what happened with carbon 14 after that? I would say yes. they then go to a lame sunspot cycle. This is not the same as a carbon measurement. Why the switch? Because if they would have continued with a carbon graph you would have seen something like this. I know this is not a carbon 14 measure, but this closely follows the same of pattern carbon 14 readings. If someone finds the chart for carbon 14 readings since 1950 I would sure like to see them.
  37. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    13 doug_bostrom i was in LA last week and the daytime temps were in the low 80's and the night time temps dipped to the 50's. i agree with you, just weather.....
  38. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    cruzn246 - given the Milankovitch cycle (sp?), solar irradiance, and the fact that our CO2 emissions (which should add up to 4ppm/year) are adding 2ppm/year, it should be cooling now without anthropogenic influence. Next question?
  39. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    Speaking of anachronistic climate patterns, personally I think throwing a substantial and irretrievable additional lagged input into a system dominated by hysteresis without thoroughly predicting the novel perturbation's effects is reckless. We're a little late off the mark with integrating our own activities with those of nature. Does our belated realization mean we should thus ignore our activities, remain fixated on natural phenomena, pretend we don't exist? Perhaps such a comment would better fit in the topic of models, however.
  40. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    "I'll take a punt but you need to ask over what timescale so I will look at post-1975 out to now. For natural effects TSI very slightly down since 1975. Milankovitch forcings are obviously dependent on latitude but glacial cycle tracks NH effects which are very very slowly going down. Aerosols slightly up. Overall barely perceptable change with maybe some cooling. Of course this is in AR4 WG1, FAQ 9.2, Fig 1." So you think we should have stayed in about the same climate patterns we were having from the the 40s to the mid 70s?
  41. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Chrisc at @32: "I would far rather a civilisation based on love and respect for one's fellow human beings preferably grounded in humble acknowledgment of our dependence on a loving God 'in whom we live and move and have our being' " And I would far rather a civilization based on friendly fairies, dancing elves, and happy talking bunnies, but that has no more to do with reality than your fantasy. The fact is that our unprecedented standard of living, our ability to determine our future, and even our ability to feed the billions of people on the planet are due to the relentless honesty of the scientific method (no matter how hard some individuals try to subvert it). adelady @33: "What's so different with this issue?" This issue has a multi-trillion dollar industry fighting tooth and nail to prevent any action, and they've allied themselves with people who think that if they "win" the argument, physical reality will somehow be forced to conform to their beliefs.
  42. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    chriscanaris: I would far rather a civilisation based on love and respect for one's fellow human beings preferably grounded in humble acknowledgment of our dependence on a loving God 'in whom we live and move and have our being' as the Greek poet Menander famously put it. Presumably, if you believe in "a loving God," you also believe in a God who gave us the ability to make intelligent decisions based on what science tells us about the world, and to take responsibility for our actions. What "scientism" is telling us, again and again, is that what we choose to do affects people and the environment in ways that are potentially irrevocable. I can't respect any ethics, let alone any religion, that ignores these facts, or posits some sort of supernatural "Get Out of Jail Free" card that will save us from the logical consequences of keeping our heads in the sand, and I hope you can't either. At this point in human history, it's very hard to see how one could "love and respect one's fellow human beings" without understanding, in scientific terms, how our actions are likely to affect them. Echoing Doug @36, we've got some growing up to do.
  43. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    The basic problem is that cosmic ray seeded CCNs are not the only aerosols that can seed clouds.
  44. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    This is not really a significant physical sciences mystery, it's now a behavioral puzzle. When I was in high school there was a fellow I think would've been unanimously elected as a model of responsibility and maturity for his age group, a person who not only got straight A grades in what was then the equivalent of AP physics and maths but also seemed to -understand- physics, was not just regurgitating his lessons. Did that stop him from rolling over his brand-new VW Thing at the gates of the school, ejecting 5 occupants who despite all of their intellectual wisdom did not have the visceral, animal connection to facts necessary for their seatbelts to have been fastened? Did this boy stop and check those belts, were his high spirits overridden by his cold facts? No, and no. We've got some growing up to do.
  45. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    I'll take a punt but you need to ask over what timescale so I will look at post-1975 out to now. For natural effects TSI very slightly down since 1975. Milankovitch forcings are obviously dependent on latitude but glacial cycle tracks NH effects which are very very slowly going down. Aerosols slightly up. Overall barely perceptable change with maybe some cooling. Of course this is in AR4 WG1, FAQ 9.2, Fig 1.
  46. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Revenue under threat? That's where I get flummoxed. Revenue comes from profitable activity - any profitable activity. I just don't see why a large organisation wouldn't grab with both hands at new opportunities to make money hand over fist. They're very good at extracting subsidies from governments for their current activities, what's to stop them arm-twisting for even more subsidies for newer activities? I have a suspicion that for all their money, glamour and presumed sophistication, these leaders of industry are much like peasants who won't move from the sides of a seething volcano. They just can't see the opportunity for a better, more profitable, life with less danger.
  47. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    adelady "Eliminating anthropogenic influence is the first issue. Do you mean all the changes since the land use changed by the introduction of agriculture, or the whole of the industrial revolution, or just the last 60 odd years of accelerated industry, land use and population changes? It makes a difference, you know." Of course it does. Lay a number on it.
  48. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    Eliminating anthropogenic influence is the first issue. Do you mean all the changes since the land use changed by the introduction of agriculture, or the whole of the industrial revolution, or just the last 60 odd years of accelerated industry, land use and population changes? It makes a difference, you know.
  49. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    What's so different with this issue? Maybe some positive feedback? Maybe these examples are all positively correlated w/revenue under threat? $2.2 trillion per year for the top eight petroleum extraction/refining/marketing firms alone. Concerted public relations efforts along these lines: "For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases." Peabody Energy Chairman Greg Boyce Important shareholder value trends:
  50. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    CBW, I'm not so sure. I think it's a continuing anti-elite (or something) strand in society. The Nobel Prize granted to Einstein was specifically chosen to avoid the controversy over relativity. People in cafes would challenge him over this stuff - people who had much less chance of understanding relativity at all than people have now of understanding the generalities of climate science. The sociological project would probably be more along the lines of delineating which particular kinds of ideas people find uncomfortable and how that affects them personally and their interactions with the wider society. (Why do people who live on the sides of volcanoes resist the idea that they'd be better off moving somewhere safer? And a million other topics.) As for the 'alarmist' stuff on climate disruption, I'm really interested in why this is so much harder than dealing with acid rain or the hole in the ozone layer. Those ideas and eventual solutions took some time, but raised nothing like this level of antagonism and resistance. What's so different with this issue?

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