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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 112501 to 112550:

  1. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Skeptic use three versions of this argument based on TSI, sunspots and cosmic rays respectively. I think you need to address all three.
  2. Temp record is unreliable
    BP - the irony in your post on objectivity is amazing. Signal to noise in MSU and sealevel is easily quantifiable. And your UHI doesnt make any sense with numerous papers on measuring and understanding the effect. As to GHCN. Do think it reasonable that stations going into the GHCN have temperatures corrected so that every station measures temperature on the same basis? THEN you worry about gridding etc. I think you should actually get the station data and the GHCN adjustment data from the station custodian. Why guess?
  3. Long Term Certainty
    Well the AFL Grand final will be won by one of sixteen clubs (probably less by now). And most likely will be won by St Kilda, Geelong or the Magpies. While it can't be predicted with 100% certainty now there are very few realistic outcomes. In comparison the climate is far more complex and chaotic. To keep the footy analogy we don't actually know how many teams are playing. And even some of the teams we know about we have absolutely no idea about their form. Even supposedly the most important player on the field, CO2, is far from completely understood. It is as you say a simple matter of understanding a not infinite number of physical processes (that's true about everything), problem is we don't have that understanding yet. Just on the Wally Broecker prediction. How many temperature estimates have been published over the past 3 decades? My guess is many and most are far less accurate than that. Hansen 1988 might be one example. I'm saying we shouldn’t act on climate change because of uncertainty but I'm with you in not recommending the brick wall at 80mph thing.
  4. Is the sun causing global warming?
    Why did you use an 11 year average instead of a yearly average? That may be more clear. Based on sunspot activity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle, the past 2 solar cycles have been extremely active (past 22 years, plus the past 4 have been stronger than normal). I'd be shocked if solar sunspot activity does not correlate to sun temperature emissions.
    Response: The 11 year average is used to filter out the solar cycle. The yearly values are shown in the intermediate version, along with the 11 year average (see the link to "Its the sun" for the intermediate version
  5. Is global warming still happening?
    It seems to me (heretic as usual!) that such a short and simplistic explanation of a very complicated and politically highly-charged issue --"Is global warming still happening?"-- plays right into the hands of the deniers. If they hired me to do PR for them, I would say: "Look, this is the very best that believers in climate change can come up with. In contrast, here are 5,000 words proving that global warming is not happening at all."
  6. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    A small remark seems to have unleashed a perfect storm of argument. So is increased Internet traffic a positive or negative consequence of climate change? Arguably, every energy expenditure however small increases net entropy in the universe as we know it thus hastening our own demise as a species. Just kidding :-)
  7. Long Term Certainty
    Add one uncertainty with a substantial economic downside to a known and inevitable economic brick wall also with an extraordinary negative outcome and one could say we have a compelling case for change. It's a certainty that our supplies of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons are going to buckle under the present demand curve, leading to fundamental inability to satisfy increasing consumption and thus inevitably escalating prices compounded by volatility. That's how our beloved market works, after all. It's safe to say that as far as petroleum and natural gas are concerned, they're a looming dead end for anybody wishing to preserve and extend our energy intensive lifestyle. For that matter there's huge spectrum of products touching every single aspect of our lives whose prices will balloon as we fecklessly burn hydrocarbons instead of using them more wisely. Does anybody think we're going to substitute coal for oil at the present rate of petroleum extraction and the type of applications satisfied by petroleum? Show some numbers. Exactly how is that going to work? Ignoring this is a good prescription for willingly abandoning overall economic prosperity but for some unfathomable reason it's become a standard part of the climate contrarian mantra, as demonstrated by Thingadonta. So, taking the contrarians' advice we're going to see our mobility massively impaired as we return to the age of coal. We'll be making polymers and fuel from increasingly lousy, dirt-saturated sub-bituminous fossil plants. That's it, the best we can do because we're so scared of facing the future, frightened by demagogues conjuring ghosts of failed totalitarian regimes? Now that's depressing. Surely we can do better.
  8. Long Term Certainty
    Stephan. Nice work. Good to see it come together so nicely.
  9. Long Term Certainty
    Thingadonta. "It would be a great mistake to restructure the world's economy and sources for fuels if climate change has relatively minor impacts." That might be true for a single, isolated issue (I can't think of a suitable parallel just now). But it certainly isn't for this one. Not only do we have this particular uncertainty about the consequences of burning fossil fuels, we have another one. There is equal uncertainty about how soon, how fast, those self-same fossil fuels will run out. Equally there is also uncertainty about how soon, how far, how fast the prices for these increasingly rare commodities will rise. And we do know, for a fact that they will be, one day - which day? - unaffordable for the general uses we now apply them to. So combining these uncertainties, we can address two (or three depending on your point of view) problems with a one-size-fits-all solution. This is an advantage, not a problem. We don't have to find several solutions, with the associated additional financing and reorganisation, to deal with several, simultaneous unrelated problems. Just one focused approach will deal with all the issues - including the effects on the oceans.
  10. Long Term Certainty
    @thingadonta - I think nature is 'rigged' as far as climate is concerned, but we're doing the 'rigging' by dumping tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year, and it probably wont be to anyone's benefit. And restructuring of our economies, particularly with regard to energy supply, is going to happen soon in any event - there's only so much oil to be drilled, and the 'cheap' resources are fast running out.
  11. Of satellites and temperatures
    #34 Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 18 August, 2010 So what if they don't (and they normally don't) run the model for each pixel independently? The RMS error is reduced whether averaging is done before or after modeling or in some combination of averaging before and after modeling. For example, RSS first calculates monthly averaged 2.5 x 2.5 angular degree cells. So there are "only" about 10,000 of these cells covering the earth. Each of these cells is composed of about 2000 elemental samples and have a significantly reduced RMS error compared to a single elemental sample. These are then modeled and the 10,000 x 12 x 10 = 1.2 million cell samples covering a global decade are used to compute a global temperature trend. As long as the modeling and other processing don't introduce a time dependent systematic error then a global temperature trend can be computed at much higher accuracy than the temperature of an individual pixel sample.
  12. Is global warming still happening?
    @thingadonta - I don't really think it's misleading. The whole point of the post is to answer the question: "Is the world still warming?" The answer to that question is an unequivocal "Yes". As this is the "basic" version of the response, I feel that discussion of the rates of warming, variations in the rates, and the causes of those variations are not appropriate, and would only confuse the issue. They belong in the intermediate-level version, perhaps, and certainly in the advanced version, but not in the basic one. And regarding Trenberth's misquoted line - ocean heat content may just be a convenient excuse, or it may just be the truth. The statement should perhaps be this: "We know X amount of additional heat energy is being retained by the Earth, but we don't know where it's going, as it doesn't seem to be warming the atmosphere as fast as we thought it might".
  13. Long Term Certainty
    "And no one in their right mind should delay action on climate change because we don’t know exactly how bad it is going to be" This is not necassarily true. It would be a great mistake to restructure the world's economy and sources for fuels if climate change has relatively minor impacts. Restructuring economies based on long term projected benefits/negatives has been done before, with disastrous consequences (eg 1920s-1930s agriculture in Russia, 'Great leap Forward' in China). Partly because of these sort of historical precedents, a widespread and influential school of thought exists which rejects such large scale 'interferances' in eg market forces. Or alternatively, you have to do it from within the market system itself-which is what the whole carbon tax thing is about. Simply repeating 'its going to be bad' over and over is not going to have much affect on such thinking which has built up from mistakes made over the centuries, one needs to prop up the science and present the whole picture with regards to net risks and benefits, as well as providing viable alternatives, otherwise such a school of thought simply replies "we've heard it all before". As for your long term certainty, Burswood casino is rigged to benefit the casino, nature isn't 'rigged' to benefit anything, one way or another.
  14. Is global warming still happening?
    "those long term trends show that the globe is still, unfortunately, warming." The above diagram may be true, but is slightly misleading/doesn't present the whole picture. Skeptics have pointed out that several indicators are slowing in their rate of warming, contrary to IPCCC projections. (Which is also why the kefuffle with Trenberth and Jones' (mis)quotes 'we cant account for lack of warming', 'no warming since 1995' etc etc has occurred-they cant account for the 'slowing rate', unless one takes into account overall ocean heat-which may just be a convenient excuse). If global warming 'rate' is slowing in these indicators (air T near surface, T over land, reduction in sea ice, sea surface T), this is in contradiction to IPCC projections. This may of course be natural variation, as often claimed, but it is more correct to state it so, and make it explicit, unlike in the diagram above: data indiactes several warming indicators are in fact slowing in the last decade or so. (Also in line with a cooling sun, also suggesting the sun is still a major factor in recent climate variations).
  15. Temp record is unreliable
    BP writes: In all these cases people are desperately looking for tiny little effects hidden in huge noise with predetermined expectation. Not the best precondition for objectivity. I don't think that's a reasonable suggestion. Spencer & Christy are "skeptics" but their UAH satellite record is not dramatically different from RSS's version (+0.14C/decade vs. +0.16). Several of the recent "blog-based" replications of the GISTEMP/HADCRUT surface temperature record were done by "skeptics" or "semi-skeptics" ... but they don't show any difference from the mainstream versions. If Greenland were gaining ice, or if the global mean temperature were falling over the 1979-2010 period, or if there were a reasonable way to process satellite altimetry data that showed sea levels declining ... somebody would have published it by now. Do you seriously think Spencer & Christy haven't scrutinized their methods, looking for anything that could get them back to the (erroneous) cooling trend they got so much fame and attention for in the 1990s? Sorry, BP, but that argument just won't fly.
  16. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #41: "RATE of change that matters. RATE of change is what causes mass extinctions. RATE of change results in acidification become overwhelming before processes operating on geological...." Yes, but no research has been conducted that I am aware of the rate of dissolution/precipitation of carbonate on the sea floor, so we don't know the rate of this potential negative feedback to ocean acidification. The geological record indicates the ocean is strongly buffered, and takes a very long time to acidify, suggesting such a buffering as suggested above to ocean acidification is more or less instantaneous. #44 muoncounter: your point about more rain is partly why agricultural output (including rice) is also increasing- and why the discussion about agricultre in the above article is wrong/misleading-more rain means more crops, particularly in marginal temperate zones. Too simple for AGW promoters to understand.
  17. Berényi Péter at 12:14 PM on 18 August 2010
    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #42 muoncounter at 11:16 AM on 18 August, 2010 Why not look a little further on the NOAA site and find this graph for Atlantic storms I tell you why. Hurricanes making landfall in the US during the last 160 years are well documented (there were insurance companies there during the entire epoch). Named Atlantic storms on the other hand, are not, especially before the satellite era. In earlier times there must have been a lot that would have deserved a name but never got one, because went unnoticed.
  18. Of satellites and temperatures
    I find it a bit amusing that BP accused me of "exaggerating" when I stated a plain, simple fact (for the entire duration of the satellite record, RSS and GISTEMP have trends that are identical to within 0.01 C/decade). The data for both are available online. Calculate the trends, 1979-present. One is +0.16 C/decade and the other is ... +0.16 C/decade.
  19. Berényi Péter at 11:58 AM on 18 August 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    #115 scaddenp at 11:20 AM on 18 August, 2010 never found out what the homogenisation procedure was Listen, I am talking about adjustments done to raw data here. I thought homogenization is supposed to come later. Anyway, it is next to impossible to assess the validity of a procedure if truly raw data are not published. How likely is it that Environment Canada stations needed an increasing upward adjustment starting in 1964 up to 0.9°C toward the end to make their way into GHCN raw dataset?
  20. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #39: "Also it largrely depends on the type of crop, many crops only need a little more water, rather than more sunlight, as the main factor in their productivity." Oh, there's plenty of water available: 50% rise in extreme rain incidence in last 50 yrs Extreme rainfall events (rainfall more than 100 mm/day) have increased by 50% during the past 50 years. ... And, most climate models predict that global warming will increase such events. We cannot claim that a specific extreme event is due to global warming although we know that the probability of such events will increase as the earth becomes warmer. That reminds me of another recent article, cited here.
  21. Berényi Péter at 11:44 AM on 18 August 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    #113 scaddenp at 10:52 AM on 18 August, 2010 BP- and I will ask again. What do you think the probability of surface temp record, glacial ice volume, sealevel and satellite temperatures trends ALL being wrong so as to give us a false trend? I can't assign a probability to that event, because the sample space is undefined. We have no idea what might or might not going on in the background. But I would say it's likely in the ordinary sense of the word. In all these cases people are desperately looking for tiny little effects hidden in huge noise with predetermined expectation. Not the best precondition for objectivity. At least the surface temperature record has serious problems with neglecting the temporal UHI effect due to fractal-like population distribution and quadrupling of global population density in slightly more than a century. If you subtract this from the trend, not much remains, leaving all the multiple independent lines of evidence inconsistent with each other.
  22. On the Question of Diminishing Arctic Ice Extent
    As the commercials say, "Here we go". High-tonnage tanker through Northeast passage
  23. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #39: "Mass extunctions occur when sea level falls, not rises. Sea life and biodiversity generally flourishes in the geologial record with seal level rises." Here is a top 5 list of biggest known mass extinctions. Note causes include asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions on a large scale ("which may have led to global warming"), flood volcanism leading to loss of oxygen in the oceans and, yes, dropping (but then rising again) sea level. Of course, it is apples and oranges to compare mass extinctions in geologic time periods when most forms of life were marine to what we are talking about here. And we're not even talking about 'extinction', we're talking about floods, loss of agricultural resources, loss of infrastructure and general crappiness for anyone living along the coastline. No, that's not extinction, but its darned unpleasant.
  24. Temp record is unreliable
    BP - you show a site saying how interesting but never found out what the homogenisation procedure was. As I pointed out earlier, people have done this for 2 stations in NZ where "they were apparently adjusted to show warming", but when the station siting history etc was examined, the homogenisation procedure was shown to be correct. Its not enough to show just the readings, you have to have site history and adjustment procedure. And you guess on probability that the consilience is wrong?
  25. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #38: Sum of Safir-Simpson number by year is an interesting statistic. I took the same data and divided your cumulative SSN by number of storms in 5 year bins. Looked quite different. Of course, SSn is based on pressure and windspeed. As a victim of TS Allison, I'm here to tell you that storms that don't contribute to your statistic sure make a heck of a mess. So it would appear to be number of named storms that is a better indicator. Why not look a little further on the NOAA site and find this graph for Atlantic storms: Bars depict number of named systems (open/yellow), hurricanes (hatched/green), and category 3 or greater (solid/red), 1886-2004 This seems to indicate a gradual increase in the number of named storms in later years.
  26. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    thingadonta - Please, please back your assertions with references. "well known" my foot. The only reference you provide is wiki and clearly you didnt bother to read the Tyrell paper that it quotes, nor its gloomy cites. And to endlessly repeat the mantra - Its the RATE of change that matters. RATE of change is what causes mass extinctions. RATE of change results in acidification become overwhelming before processes operating on geological However, instead of arm-waving about it, you could read IPCC WG2 instead.
  27. Berényi Péter at 11:07 AM on 18 August 2010
    Temp record is unreliable
    #112 scaddenp at 10:49 AM on 18 August, 2010 Pick a station in this high arctic set. Dig out the data needed for homogenization, follow the GHCN manual and show us where they went wrong. Just one station. Nah, that would be cherry picking and excessive detail.
  28. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Experts overwhelmingly disagree with you, BP, probably because you did not take into account the fact that years leading up to the 1960s were unusually active. Look at it from the power dissipation of larger storms viewpoint as well as what happens when natural variability is superimposed on the secular trend (or climate change is superimposed on the variability?): Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years Low frequency variability in globally integrated tropical cyclone power dissipation Heightened tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic: natural variability orclimate trend? Trends in global tropical cyclone activity over the past twenty years (1986–2005) The increasing intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones
  29. Temp record is unreliable
    BP- and I will ask again. What do you think the probability of surface temp record, glacial ice volume, sealevel and satellite temperatures trends ALL being wrong so as to give us a false trend? Consilience anyone?
  30. Temp record is unreliable
    BP - homogenization adjustments are something that happen at an individual station level and relate to time of day of reading, screen type, thermometer type, altitude etc. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you think the homogenization is done wrong, then you need to show us a station where the adjustment procedure has been incorrectly applied or proof that those procedures have flaws. There is just not enough information here to assess whether you supposed problems are real problems. Pick a station in this high arctic set. Dig out the data needed for homogenization, follow the GHCN manual and show us where they went wrong. Just one station.
  31. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    "You'd need to provide the other side then, for your assertion to be taken seriously. Substantiate your claim please with facts." Here is a few others. Sea Level. Mass extunctions occur when sea level falls, not rises. Sea life and biodiversity generally flourishes in the geologial record with seal level rises. Health. I dont know where you get your stats from; it is well known that cold related deaths far outweigh heat related deaths. I think your figures are actually a projection in very high IPCC warming scenarios, but are not current stats. Lomborg has some good data on this in his book 'Cool It', which is the opposite of what you say, cold related deaths are ~5-10 times heat related deaths. Also, malaria is a poverty related disease, which has been declining since 1900 as the world has warmed, the exaxct oppoisite of what you project above. Also, draining of wetlands (eg Southern US) has generally been shown to reduce malaria prevalance. In the case of tropical disease incidence, I'm sorry, but biodiversity is generally a bad thing. 'Biodiversity' also means virus diversity. That is why in low biodiversity temperate forests there is low rates of disease generally; tropical Africa would probably be better off reducing its rainforest and wetlands extent if it wants to reduce malaria and enhance human health (a sure heresy amongst the green brigade). Polar Melting Greater access to mineral and petroluem resources. Ocean Acidification I'll get back to you about possible positive benefits, but oceans wont acidify if the rate of burial of carbonate sediments and the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments responds to changes in pH and provides provide a negative feedback to ocean acidification: from Wiki: "Leaving aside direct biological effects, it is expected that ocean acidification in the future will lead to a significant decrease in the burial of carbonate sediments for several centuries, and even the dissolution of existing carbonate sediments.[49] This will cause an elevation of ocean alkalinity, leading to the enhancement of the ocean as a reservoir for CO2 with moderate (and potentially beneficial) implications for climate change as more CO2 leaves the atmosphere for the ocean.[50]" Agriculture: The area of temperate land which receives a net benefit from warmer temperatures greatly outweighs the area of land where the sun's angle of incidence is too high to benefit agrculture. Also it largrely depends on the type of crop, many crops only need a little more water, rather than more sunlight, as the main factor in their productivity. The area from China to Europe has a greater area which will benefit from warmer temperatues whilst still having enough sunlight to grow crops. The issue here isn't angle of incidence of the sun, but largely T and precipitation (which is both projected to increase in these areas).
    Moderator Response: Graham's response: Thanks for your comments. Sea-levels: I think the timescales we're interested in as a race lie outside that of evolution, so I wouldn't agree that this was a benefit the human race might accrue. Health: you say you don't know where the stats came from. The intermediate rebuttal is the answer, so you can look that up yourself. All the claims made here are referenced to the original papers. Your point about cold related deaths belies the fact that we are discussing projections - not what happened in the past. Polar melting: true, more resources would be available - theoretically. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing, however, but I've put it in. Ocean pH: cite your sources. A wiki doesn't cut it. Same with agriculture - a lot of claims there, no detail, and no substantiation.
  32. Newcomers, Start Here
    Doug, it is also good to see Roy Spencer trying hard to persuade people that G&T is a load of cobblers.
  33. Berényi Péter at 10:37 AM on 18 August 2010
    Newcomers, Start Here
    #36 Ned at 09:35 AM on 18 August, 2010 * Some people accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but are under the impression that there are all kinds of problems with the surface temperature record, such that Gistemp and Hadcrut can't be replicated (wrong). right
  34. Berényi Péter at 10:26 AM on 18 August 2010
    Of satellites and temperatures
    #31 elowells at 09:40 AM on 18 August, 2010 There are about 320,000 pixels over the surface of the earth, or more than 640K samples per day Don't try to tell me they run the model for each pixel independently. Of course they don't, because it would not make sense. But that reduces the degrees of freedom drastically (as it should).
  35. Berényi Péter at 10:15 AM on 18 August 2010
    The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    #35 doug_bostrom at 05:33 AM on 18 August, 2010 when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change OK, let's have a look at statistics on some extreme weather events. Fortunately we have this technical memorandum on The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2006 from NOAA National Hurricane Center. In Appendix A of the report one can find a complete Chronological List of All Hurricanes which Affected the Continental United States: 1851-2006. I have also collected hurricane data for the most recent three complete hurricane seasons from 2007-2009, so I could produce an overview of this special type of extreme weather event for the last 159 years. As a crude measure of hurricane intensity, I have simply added up the category numbers of all hurricanes annually. As we are talking about climate (not weather), it is a 25 year running average of that number, assigned to the middle year. It looks like this: As you can see, hurricane intensity is decreasing slightly on a century scale, therefore increasingly frequent extreme weather events do not include hurricanes hitting the US. More importantly, no relation to either any kind of global average temperature history reconstruction or atmospheric CO2 levels can be seen. At least in this respect, if hurricanes are considered indicators, climate does not even seem to change much, not in the Atlantic region for sure.
  36. Newcomers, Start Here
    On the other hand, if you dont' want to be constructive, continue presenting counterfactual narratives of climate science here and in a strange way you can be equally helpful to Skeptical Science's never ending quest to reassemble intellectual integrity from the broken shards scattered about as the result of degenerate rumor-mongering. Please, however, try to be original. Put some effort into it, don't lean on extended quotes from fringe specialist conspiracy theorist websites, don't cite political pundit blather only tangentially related to science, don't lazily say "what if" without bothering to explore "if," don't parrot the latest talking point or strange theory from your favorite contrarian source. Take a look at the "Argument" list, eliminate the obvious, innovate. Or, at least use the "Argument" list to make comments in the appropriate thread, rather than blurting seemingly random non sequiturs in the wrong place. Borrowing from Sherlock Holmes, it's the dog that didn't bark that's interesting, even if it turns out the dog has nothing useful to say when asked.
  37. Of satellites and temperatures
    #31 Berényi Péter at 22:15 PM on 17 August, 2010 The RMS error is for an ensemble of "pixels": samples at the spatial resolution of the instrument, which is about 40 km x 40 km. Pixels at the equator are sampled twice per day and pixels at the poles about 14 times per day. There are about 320,000 pixels over the surface of the earth, or more than 640K samples per day. Over a decade this is more than 2.3 Gigasamples. What limits the accuracy of determination of a trend in Global Average Temperature are time dependent systematic errors, such as the orbital decay/diurnal correction. Just because one can only determine the temperature of a single pixel at one sample time to within a few degrees doesn't imply that one can't determine the global temperature trend over a decade to much higher accuracy using billions of samples.
  38. Newcomers, Start Here
    John Cook writes: Climate skeptics vigorously attack any evidence for man-made global warming yet eagerly embrace any argument, op-ed, blog or study that refutes global warming. and Pete Ridley replies: The majority of those who are sceptical of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis do NOT reject the notion that humans case global warming. What we reject is the claim that there is convincing evidence that any such change is significant for global climates or that our continuing use of fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global climate change. I'm not sure what your confident assertion about "the majority" is based on. I doubt it's correct, but it doesn't really matter anyway. The great thing about this site is that it provides information to address people's questions more or less across the board: * Some people come here wondering whether the observed rise in CO2 is really caused by humans -- maybe it's coming from the ocean! (Nope) * Others have heard that the greenhouse effect contradicts the second law of thermodynamics (nope, again). * Some people accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas but are under the impression that there are all kinds of problems with the surface temperature record, such that Gistemp and Hadcrut can't be replicated (wrong). Now, it's fairly common for people to come by here and say "Why are you addressing all these absurd and obviously wrong arguments when you should be addressing mine, which is the one that all real, serious skeptics believe?" In point of fact, though, all of the arguments here are addressing claims or questions that other people actually do raise. So, Pete, instead of giving John a hard time for all the work he's put in responding to other peoples' questions and arguments, why not do something constructive? Next time you see a "skeptic" claiming that CO2 isn't actually rising, or that it's coming from the oceans, or that it isn't a greenhouse gas, or whatever ... why not help correct their misimpressions yourself? I've said this before, but it's stunningly rare for any "skeptic" to ever speak up here and contradict or correct another "skeptic's" mistaken claims, no matter how absurd they are. There are a few examples elsewhere (e.g., Ferdi Engelbeen trying to convince people at WUWT that the CO2 rise is real and anthropogenic). But on this site it's very, very rare. I could probably count the number of times it's happened on the thumbs of one hand. So ... to end what is already a too-long comment, I would once again ask my "skeptic" friends on this site to (a) be patient when we respond to claims that you think are stupid, because someone else actually does believe them, and (b) feel free to pitch in and help address those claims. Hey, the sooner we can get everyone to agree that yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and yes, the observed rise in CO2 is real, and yes, it is coming from fossil fuel combustion ... the more time we'll be able to spend on debating climate sensitivity or 21st century emissions scenarios or whatever you think is the real problem with the IPCC projections! :-)
  39. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    More happy talk: One 2008 study by researchers Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography estimated that if current consumption patterns are not altered, Lake Mead has a 50 percent chance of running dry by 2021. Water managers in the West were skeptical, as was The Las Vegas Review-Journal, which blasted the study in an editorial. “Predictions such as these virtually never come true,” the paper declared. “From Thomas Malthus in 1798 to Paul Ehrlich in the 1970s, the forecasters of famine, abandoned cities and desolated economies always look like fools in the end because they refuse to take into account the ingenuity and enterprise of the human race.” What's happening after the editorial was published Hint: Levels Plummet in Crucial Reservoir Oh, yes, it can't be put down to climate change, not definitively. It's entirely consistent with predictions, the variability is exactly what's expected and traditional, the trend appears to follow projections but let's not overdo it and form any conclusions, let alone imagine climate change might not be a walk in the park.
  40. Newcomers, Start Here
    Pete Ridley - I read the Joanna Nova blog posting too. It's self-congratulatory, condescending, rather lacking in facts - fairly typical of her site. A lot of the comments there point that out clearly. It's hard to say "endorsed" when John states that this Nova app is "comprehensively misleading". Now, I haven't purchased the "Our Climate" app myself, and have therefore not reviewed it (have you?). However, if it contains the same arguing points that Joanna uses on her blog, it is indeed self-contradictory. From her Skeptics Handbook: "Something else (not CO2) caused warming", "It's not warming", "CO2 is trivial", "CO2 is saturated". The disagreements between climate skeptics aren't trivial. CO2 has no effect? CO2 effect is saturated? It's the sun? Cosmic rays? Ocean? Climate has varied a lot before (indicating high sensitivity to forcings, incidentally)? Records are unreliable (then how do you know the climate changed before)? Feedbacks will cancel out all change (contradicting the climate changing before)? If the various skeptics weren't all arguing against the science, there would be sufficient differences between them to spark inter-skeptic wars. The focus on the small points rather than the big picture (somehow assuming that any potential issue with any measurement invalidates a multiply supported theory), strawman arguments (her "hit list" postings), cherry-picking (choosing the last 10-12 years to argue for warming has stopped, when the statistics argue for a minimum of 30 year averaging based on the internal variability of weather): these are serious issues with the arguments Nova presents. If they're in the "Our Climate" app, then it's a piece of junk software. I would agree with Trueofvoice, incidentally - your pasted quote from Joanna Nova doesn't really inspire confidence in her rationality.
  41. Newcomers, Start Here
    Pete - given Nova's abuse of science in past, it would hardly be surprising if she liked take downs of her stuff here. Do you actually believe there is any importance in her uninformed misunderstandings of science? John isn't trying to win a popularity contest, just accurately portray the science. Instead of posting useless opinion, how about putting up some actual science if you dont like John's stuff. Nova's complaints are roll on the floor laughingly bad as the "climate's changed before" thread would tell you.
  42. Greenland's ice mass loss has spread to the northwest
    A little update: Researchers Race to Catch Up With Melting, Shifting Polar Realities When the Petermann Glacier calved an ice island four times the size of Manhattan earlier this month, GPS sensors embedded in the ice and time-lapse cameras sitting on nearby rock were watching. But scientists who put them there were caught off guard. Traveling to northwestern Greenland to retrieve the data that equipment recorded will cost them roughly $93,000, money they currently don't have. That's unfortunate, says Jason Box, a climate scientist at Ohio State University who helped place those instruments, because the difficulty comes as his research team has made a startling discovery. Of the 30 widest glaciers in Greenland, it's the ones in the north -- where Petermann is located -- that are collectively losing the most ice. "The science really hasn't caught up with the observations," he said of those results, which he will present at a scientific meeting this week in Ohio. "The observations are showing really dramatic changes. There is an element of surprise. The fact that there is so much change in northern Greenland is not something the community is aware of yet." Box's dilemma illustrates the difficulty and expense of operating in harsh polar environments, factors that can magnify sheer bad luck. (Scientists set up their monitoring of the Petermann Glacier last summer, when they expected it to calve at any moment.) But the story of the recent calving also offers a window into the intense, ongoing effort by scientists who study the world's ice to improve their understanding of how melting at the poles will contribute to sea level rise. "One of the major impacts [of the calving] will be that we expect Petermann Glacier ... to speed up, something like a factor of two, because glaciers always speed up when ice shelves break off in front of them," said Robert Bindschadler, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, at a recent congressional briefing. "That's an expected consequence. And that's going to increase the drainage of the Greenland ice sheet and contribute to a rise in sea level. But just how quickly the massive freshwater ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica will melt is still uncertain. And that uncertainty carries over into projections of how high and how fast the world's seas will rise. Just three years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted seas would rise between 7 and 23 inches by 2100 -- but couched that estimate with a giant caveat. The IPCC cautioned that an additional rise could come from rapid and unpredictable melting in Greenland and Antarctica, which it didn't attempt to estimate. "The terminology in a football game is, we punted," said Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley, one of the scientists who worked on that portion of the IPCC's wide-ranging fourth assessment report. "We didn't know what to do." Now scientists are scrambling to play catch-up amid high stakes. Greenland's ice alone contains enough fresh water to raise the world's seas by 23 feet. Reconstructions of the Earth's past climate indicate that a temperature rise of roughly 2 to 7 degrees Celsius could cause the Greenland ice sheet to melt entirely, Alley said. "What we find from looking at history -- when the world warms, the Arctic warms more," he said, citing a 2008 federal report on abrupt climate change that he helped author. "When the Arctic warms, Greenland melts." Scientists don't believe the Greenland ice sheet will disappear anytime soon. But if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked, Earth's climate could reach a tipping point in a decade that would put Greenland's ice on a course to disappear within centuries, Alley said. Satellite measurements show the margins of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are thinning, driven primarily by the acceleration of outlet glaciers like Petermann. "As the Earth is getting warmer, ice sheets are going to shrink and sea level will go up," Bindschadler said. "There is no doubt about it. The key question for experts such as myself are these: How much will sea level go up, and when is that going to happen? That's where research is going right now." More, including many interesting remarks by researchers
  43. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Argus, I did not notice your post of your result. Once I see the data we can discuss it. Keep in mind that 17 all time high records have been set so far this summer. You are attempting to cast doubt on how hot it has been this summer by quibbling over a statistic. Look at figure 1 above and tell me where your doubt comes from. The GISS record is at an all time record high. I see no resonable room for doubt. As John often says, look at the whole picture.
  44. Newcomers, Start Here
    Pete, Is your lengthy cut-and-paste intended as sarcasm? I would assume so, as it succeeds in making Mrs. Nova look rather unhinged. Keep up the good work.
  45. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    TOP, Please provide a link to the Weizmann study of reforesting the Sahara to eliminate man-made greenhouse gases. I'll be damned if I can find a reference to it.
  46. Newcomers, Start Here
    John, not everyone agrees with what you claim this site is all about. While searching for more information on positive feedbacks I happened across this beauty from Joanne Nova (http://joannenova.com.au/2010/08/skeptics-iphone-app-endorsed-de-facto-by-critic/#more-9801). QUOTE: .. Cook runs the ambush site SkepticalScience.com. .. SkepticalScience.com is a parody of skepticism. It is “skeptical of the skeptics” .. but it accepts everything offered up by Authorities as if it is the Word of God. “NOAA can do no wrong” (and was that NOAA or Noah?) All of the points held up by Cook are weak “whatever” issues: things that are hardly a flaw. He’s noticed that the disorganized mass of real skeptics sometimes disagree with each other, golly gee, which proves we think for ourselves and don’t answer to a higher bureaucracy. John Cook — who so wants to be seen as skeptical – instead is anything but, and conforms strictly to the text-book litany as written by the IPCC. .. Cook of course, doesn’t quote directly. This is a classic modus operandi for unskeptical scientist. If they quote directly, they can’t impute things, like “sceptics citing this fact as if it’s never occurred to climate scientists”, which we don’t say, but Cook says, thus creating a strawman. Why would he bother stringing out this kind of weak speculative stuff if he actually had something real to attack? He makes preposterous claims that skeptics cherry-pick, focus on small picture, never on the big picture; except the graphs the skeptics use cover the last 30 years, the last 1,000 years, the last 10,000 years, the last 500 million years. There’s no period we won’t talk about — unlike the AGW crowd, for whom a trend is between 10 and 50 years (to get the last warming period 1975 – 2001 in) and who don’t want to talk about the little ice age or medieval warm period. Unskeptical scientists think “long term” means 100 years and repeat graphs from 1880 -2010 ad nauseum. They weren’t exactly producing billboards with graphs of the last 500 million years. UNQUOTE. I couldn’t have described it better myself. Best regards, Pete Ridley
  47. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    As Chris' cue above has largely been ignored, I'm going to respond to one of Chris' remarks. It's a very convenient truth that of course we cannot ascribe any particular weather event to climate change, not with certainty. However, when we look at statistics it becomes clear we may conclude that a proportion of increasingly frequent extreme weather events are themselves indicators as well as outcomes of climate change. When experts tell us so and we choose instead to focus on the uncertainty of a particular event, we're ignoring an inconvenient truth larger and more significant than the event itself. In the case of Pakistan, we have an event that has exceeded any previously recorded, in a way that has overwhelmed the resources of the country and is threatening Pakistan's stability in an entirely new way; Pakistan is in fact an example of what we may expect to see in the way of both physical and cultural impacts of climate change. Again, choosing to interpret this year's monsoon in Pakistan as a singular feature without heed of local as well as larger context is to lose perspective. We have other examples of stability being upset this year. When an extended history of cultural habit is overturned by a weather event transcending a local population's notion of where to live and how to live in that location and such an event is entirely in keeping predictions, that's a message to be folded into statistics. Such an occurrence is not only useful from a statistical standpoint but more germane to the topic of this thread is an indicator of how disruptive the sequence of action we've set into motion will be. If we choose not to see and allocate costs of climate change, our understanding is impaired and our ability to respond will be irrational by choice.
  48. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Effects of Climate Change
    Arguments that warmer is not necessarily worse, miss the point that it is the rate of the changes that are so dangerous. That, at least in part, is what makes all these effects of climate change so hard to adapt to, for humans as well as other species.
  49. Heat stress: setting an upper limit on what we can adapt to
    D (and others) -- Yes, ideally we could arrange people neatly in rows in Manitoba and make it work. But let's take a hard look at the economic reality of the private property system. We don't have a world government that can quickly plan and implement the kinds of population movements that have been discussed. We have hundreds of small and large nations (and global entities) in competition with each other for resources, and many of these nations are themselves made up of millions of plots of private property. Consider the current U.S. response to immigration (illegal or otherwise). Consider the U.K. response to the Empire machine being shifted into reverse. How long will it take for >ordered< mass immigration to take place, even on the realistic scale (5-10% of world pop)? And will the people who have to migrate also have to sell their futures to real estate opportunists? Worse yet, if people are to move, how much energy (and from what source) will be needed to build new homes (or are we thinking tent farms?), create new transportation, food, water, energy, communication networks, etc.? And who is going to pay for it? (don't mention raising taxes in the U.S. or, I'm guessing, Canada) And how much ill will and resistance will occur among the "natives" of these immigration destinations (an example)? We do need a change in mentality, but such changes occur very slowly, and how much frustration, misery, and despair will occur in the meantime?
  50. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Argus if you dig into records you'll see that all-time high records were set pretty much across Russia from St. Petersburg to Siberia. Lots of media focus on Moscow, but the impact of the heat wave was much broader. Anyway, this is a "lost in the weeds" argument; persistently zeroing in on distractions about the proper comportment of how information is conveyed is suggestive of a wish or need to ignore a larger message.

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