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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 112651 to 112700:

  1. It hasn't warmed since 1998
    I think John Cook and Peter Sinclair's contribution to communicating climate science to the educated layman has been indispensable. However, there comes a point of diminishing returns where the best mode of communication to the remainder of the public might not be an entirely rational one. Politicians have realised since time immemorial that mindless rhetoric and appeals to the core values and fears of the people are far more effective than hard facts. Deniers understand this better than the 'good guys' and it may be necessary to take the gloves off to reach the multitude of people. So perhaps the best way to communicate with these people is not by explaining climate change in technical terms, but to emphasise the effect of climate of migration patterns, the increased chance of their beach residence being flooded by increased storm intensity and to emphasise our need for energy security with the onset of peak oil.
  2. Did global warming stop in 1998? (basic version)
    For a simple method, easily verifiable by lay people, just average each 5 years or decade for the last few. Using Hadley data (a few months old since I haven't updated the values I keep in Excel) the results for the last few decades are: (anomalies in degrees Celsius) 1970 – 1979 = -0.0772 1980 – 1989 = 0.0843 1990 – 1999 = 0.2307 2000 – 2009 = 0.4041 For 5-year averages: 1980 - 1984 = 0.0596 1985 - 1989 = 0.0856 1990 - 1994 = 0.1544 1995 - 1999 = 0.3070 2000 - 2004 = 0.3968 2005 - 2009 = 0.4114 Calculated using annual values. I don't know how valid the method is, but there has been no global cooling or flat-lining since 1998 using this simple calculation.
  3. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    A couple of meteorologists in the commercial weather forecasting domain look at weather statistics for this year: Wunderground's Rob Carver Weather Channel's Stu Ostrow Ostrow makes some interesting remarks on the nature of our reliance on expertise.
  4. Newcomers, Start Here
    But what about marmots??
  5. Newcomers, Start Here
    This discussion on elephants, zebras and wolves is part of the reason why I generally avoid the use of metaphors in trying to explain scientific concepts. I know metaphors are a valid and powerful communication tool but on blog discussion threads, they go pear shaped so quickly and before you know it, we're not discussing the original issue at all.
  6. Newcomers, Start Here
    Leaving aside the fascinating discussion of domestication, the reason we think climate isn't like an elephant with a thick hide that will run off and do its own thing, is because climate is a physical phenomena, subject to the laws of physics. Applying those laws to describe climatic phenomena (including weather) works remarkably well. (eg the links in here
  7. Grappling With Change: London and the River Thames
    That's interesting, GC. Some time ago I read that a number of defunct submarine coaxial cables were being volunteered by owners for use w/a seismometer network and some other data collection tasks. One was to be attached (if I remember correctly) to a Japanese instrument platform to be powered by a saltwater battery. Regarding subsurface factories, reminds me of the old Pete Seeger tune.
  8. Plain English climate science - now live at Skeptical Science
    Thanks for everything you're doing. A thought: it seems to me just from reading ads that big business has come around to accepting the reality of global warming. Has anyone done a survey of the stated policy positions of major corporations as they pertain to GW and AGW? (and what they suggest as solutions?).
  9. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    bats #88, Sorry for any confusion. My seismology reference was from personal experience with earthquake research. Predicting specifics from generalities is daunting in any field. I wasn't suggesting that you were denying consensus; that was a mild attempt at humor. Read any denialist site, they seem to find consensus threatening.
  10. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @doug, Thank you. Secondly, I dont know what WUWT refers to and from your description I dont think I would be particular interested in finding out either.
  11. gallopingcamel at 12:59 PM on 16 August 2010
    Grappling With Change: London and the River Thames
    doug_bostrom, I seldom post on WUWT but recently they had a thread on using submarine cables for making scientific measurements. I could not resist adding a little bit of history relating to the river Thames and a 29 acre factory located several meters below the high water mark along its tidal reaches: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/13/old-telco-cables-wanted-for-climate-research/#comment-457360
  12. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @muoncounter I can not tell weather or not youmisunderstood, what I wrote. If you understand what happens when a trend is superimpose to a cyclic signal then I don't understand the point with rephrasing what I wrote and pointing out things to me I already understand. Your reference to figure 2 doesn't make sense to me as I don't understand what it is you are trying to clarify to me. I am wondering about the explanation for the anomaly last winter and its relation to the explanation of the anomaly this summer. This is the anomaly for this summer (fig. 1 OP): And this is the anomaly for last winter: I find it interesting to notice that the anomalies have a similar pattern in both pictures. Is it then to much to ask if there exists a causal relation between these two pictures/pattern? And if it happens to be so why are they then attributed to different causes? Anyway, then you continue with comparing climate science with seismologists and earthquakes, and at this point I am completely lost in what your comment wants to clarify to me. Finally you end your first post at me with a comment that suggest that I would deny "scientific consensus". Whatever you mean with this would you like to point at what I wrote that made you think so? In your second comment you mention that you think La Nina is a distraction from "the big picture", but if that was the reason, why didnt you say so in the first place then?
  13. gallopingcamel at 12:40 PM on 16 August 2010
    Why I care about climate change
    doug_bostrom, We appear to have strayed into another topic. Let me sign off this thread (picking my words very carefully to avoid needlessly offending anyone). John Cook is to be commended for running a really classy blog; it must involve a great deal of hard work for very little material reward. It is clear that he is doing it because (from his perspective) it is a worthwhile cause.
  14. Newcomers, Start Here
    Thingadonta, Elephants are a perfect example of an animal that has never been domesticated. Asian elephants are trapped in the wild and broken to domestic use. Very few elephant calves are produced in captivity. Even now elephants kill more zookeepers in the USA than any other animal. Perhaps if you read Guns, germs and steel again you will notice that Dr. Diamond points this out. "Skeptics" alter the facts to suit their argument.
  15. Newcomers, Start Here
    Bringing this back somewhat on topic ... Note, though, that improved data hasn't led wolf researchers to conclude that wolf packs simply don't exist. The climate science analog would be Anthony Wolfie claiming that wolf packs don't exist, because insufficient data led to some erroneous deductions regarding the precise nature of social interactions within wolf packs ... And your 90%/10% rule would lead one to claim greater significance for the social interactions of the 10% of wolves living in zoos rather than the 90% living in the wild in packs, as being more explanatory of a pack's social structure ...
  16. Newcomers, Start Here
    You have quote mined rare instances of pompous Bureacrats riding around with Zebras from Wikipaedia, some of which later failed.
    Naw, there's just not much motivation to break zebras for riding or hauling, obviously it's easily done. You claimed it COULD NOT BE DONE, which is obviously false.
    Animals such as dogs have a strong social hierarchy
    As do zebras, two of three species of which have exactly the same harem social structure as do horses, which is exactly opposite of what you claimed. Actually, though, the "strong social hierarchy" you claim is actually quite weak in feral dog populations, and with modern DNA testing and satellite telemetry the "alpha male/alpha female" hypothesis for the social structure of wolf packs has broken down (look up David Mech). That hypothesis came from the study of wolves in captivity, typically not related to each other. Wolf packs in the wild are typically family groups, with the traditional "alpha male/alpha female" notion being replaced in modern thinking with "mommy and daddy tell us what to do", until the kids become about two or three years old, break off on their own, meet a suitable mate, and start their own pack. This helps explain why reintroduced populations in the western US have spread so rapidly, as the kids wander off looking for a suitable unoccupied territory. Much more flexible than the older notion that when alpha male dies, subordinate males fight for superiority (as is the case for harem animals like deer, elk, horses, zebras, etc). Modern telemetry has made it possible to study packs in the wild for lengthy periods of time and that kind of competition for "alpha male/female" is non-existent, or mostly non-existent, in wild packs. In zoos, of course, wolves need to sort out the hierarchy because they're tossed randomly together, like a bunch of human criminals in prison (where you see similar behavior which is totally unrelated to how normal human families or kin-based bands work). Anyway, argue against science all you want, scientists don't listen to you.
  17. Newcomers, Start Here
    #12Dhogza: If you read Guns Germs and Steel you will find that most animals can't be domesticated. <50% of those canditates avaiable for domestication are unsuitable for one reason or another, including the Zebra. You have quote mined rare instances of pompous Bureacrats riding around with Zebras from Wikipaedia, some of which later failed. Animals such as dogs have a strong social hierarchy. This can be substituted by authority from humans. Animals which do not have this heirarchy generally cant be domesticated. This is not in dispute. Elephants respong to authority, but some other animals do not. Some people think all anmals can be domesticated, (just like the Earth's climate). Jared Diamond lists the animals in his book Guns Germs and Steel which are unable to be domesticated for various reasons, despite the attmepts by pompous bureaucrats to parade through the streets with a zebra.
  18. Newcomers, Start Here
    This article makes a philosophical mistake which, if allowed to remain, will severely impair the obvious intent of getting people to understand the difference between real scientific skepticism and the outrageously false version of 'skepticism' that the so-called "climate skeptics" practice. That mistake is: asserting that "Genuine skepticism means you don't take someone's word for it but investigate for yourself." NOBODY has the time to do this. Not even professional scientists. Even they have to carefully "pick and choose" whether and where they will be skeptical. This is why I have always advocated a rather different distinction: 'irrational' vs. 'rational' skepticism. When you pick and choose well, that is rational skepticism. When you pick and choose based on the conclusion you WANT to be true instead, that is quite irrational. An example of the difference would be: it is irrational skepticism to claim that Newtonian mechanics is more accurate then Einstein's Special Relativity, rational to claim that his General Relativity might yet prove not the best theory to explain gravitation. In the climate context, it is irrational skepticism to doubt the figures and measurements showing average surface temperature climbing along w/ CO2, rational skepticism to doubt that we know by how much it will climb. Similarly, it is irrational skepticism to hold out the hope that water vapor feedback will prove to be negative when we most need it to be so (thus limiting the rise in temperature), or that biological systems will adapt to the rising CO2 by radically increasing the rate at which they absorb carbon out of the atmosphere, using these unlikelihoods as grounds for doubting the predictions of harsher living conditions for all because of global warming (aka climate change).
  19. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Bat, not picking on you, the "media" thing has been mentioned a couple of times here. My general point is, the farther we go from the original source of information, the more ambiguity and even error is introduced. There are a number of hyperventilating media treatments of this year's weather available, best ignored. WUWT's own presentation is another kind of emotional response, for that matter. Sure, we might get a few quotes in a newspaper treatment, but why bother in this day and age when we can tap directly into an agency's own description, without the noise introduced by reporters and editors? It's probably fair to say I introduce my -own- slant here, but my objective in the post is centered on helping people see how short term weather fits into a statistical perspective and how it might -not- fit in an easy way when shoved by new influences. What moved me to do this post was in fact how the calm and collected people at NASA-GISS and WMO have responded to this year's weather, how the weather protrudes from statistics enough to warrant comment; it's a notable year in terms of weather statistics. What I can do to maintain some shred of objectivity is to stick w/"official" sources, publish quotes that include qualifiers such as the onset of La Nina, not select a week from July and use that as a way of imposing my own beliefs on readers.
  20. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    batsvensson, Did I misunderstand your prior comment to suggest some sort of one-sidedness in emphasizing summer heat vs. not emphasizing winter cold? My reference to Figure 2 here was simply to reiterate the longer term trend that jumps off that graph and seems to be very similar in most measures, as Ned demonstrated a week or two ago. I suppose I find the use of el Nino/la Nina to explain all anomalies in at least one part of '' to be a distraction from the big picture.
  21. Newcomers, Start Here
    #21 scaddenp hear hear Michael
  22. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @doug_bostrom "As to "media", rather than refer to such a source instead it's of course better to go to the horse's mouth" I am a bit confused to who this refer to, but since I posted a "media" quote just above I feel targeted. If it was nor directed to me then please ignore my question below. Why do you think a climate scientists opinion (in this case the head of climate change advice at the Met Office) in this matter if published in news media is not good enough?
  23. Newcomers, Start Here
    Would another useful addition to the comments policy be a "No assertions without backing links"? Without this, discussion isnt much better than a pub political argument. By insisting on backing data (both sides), then the debate is illuminated by the collective knowledge of papers and data sources; not to mention finding for themselves where their knowledge of the world is flawed.
  24. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    michael sweet:
    In addition, Goddard counted pixels and weighted blue the same as red. A cursory scan of the data shows that the red is higher than the blue is low (note that the lowest anomaly is -3.7 while the highest is +5.8
    That's typical. He also never weights pixels at different latitudes to adjust for projection distortion.
  25. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @skywater at 07:04 AM on 16 August, 2010 Thank you for pointing that out, I stand corrected. And according to the MET office there seams to have been no extreme records broken at all.
  26. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @muoncounter I dont understand your comment. What is the point you are trying to make?
  27. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Dhogaza, It was of course a post from Goddard. I checked some weekly maps from NASA here and they show a lot more variation than the monthly data. It would be easy to show either more or less warming. As Doug said, it is important to have a reliable authority to explain the data. The overall pattern, of course, becomes more obvious as you average more and more data. In addition, Goddard counted pixels and weighted blue the same as red. A cursory scan of the data shows that the red is higher than the blue is low (note that the lowest anomaly is -3.7 while the highest is +5.8).
  28. Dikran Marsupial at 07:20 AM on 16 August 2010
    Newcomers, Start Here
    Pete Ridley@17 That would be why I have spent quite a lot of time recently at WUWT trying to help Ferdinand Engelbeen explain that the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to anthropogenic emissions. There are some skeptics (such as Roy Spencer) who accept the basic physics, but argue that there are negative feedbacks that limit climate sensitivity. However, there are also plenty sich as Richard Courtney, Arthur Rorsch, Robert Essenhigh and Tom Segalstad, who can't even accept that the rise in CO2 is antropogenic, and there are plenty of "skeptics" out there who appear happy to embrace their arguments, even though they are obviously wrong to anyone with an ounce of common sense. The fact that this even needs discussion shows your representation of the skeptic camp is somewhat inacurate.
  29. Newcomers, Start Here
    Pete. Your evidence of what the "majority of skeptics think" please? I see many who try to fool themselves that the earth isn't warming. "catastrophic" is loaded political language. What the science predicts is how much climate change you will get for a given set of forcings including GHGs. "Catastrophic" requires a judgment. I mean, is it "catastrophic" if you an enhanced mortality of say 1million a year from starvation and war, but none of those are US or American citizens? The term has no place in the debate. You claim John distorts the debate in same way that skeptics do. What, cherry pick data, misrepresent the conclusions of scientific papers, put up fraudulent graphs, misrepresent physics? Show me where John does ANY of these. You cannot advance an argument by making assertions like you did in that post (and many others) without backing them up. John is scrupulous in providing sources for papers and data.
  30. Has Global Warming Stopped?
    fydijkstra at 05:48 AM on 15 August, 2010 The Akasofu reference is of course countered by a large body of peer reviewed work, and he admits he is not a climatologist. I have not seen any proposed mechanism for the “recovery from the little ice age”?, and to describe this (or other events) as “natural” without explanation or suggested “natural” causes seems disingenuous. Though there are some different views on the relative proportions of known natural and anthropogenic warming/cooling, very few scientists do not believe that there is a significant recent anthropogenic warming trend - with other effects superimposed. The current scientific mainstream view is that Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the last millennium have generally fallen, that global temperatures in the past have been driven by a combination of orbital, solar and volcanic forcings, with various feedbacks operating. The industrial age has brought dramatic and accelerating increases in greenhouse gases, and also an abrupt reversal of the cooling trend. The solar and volcanic forcings still have an effect on climate, but the GHG forced component is now dominating other factors, see for example Lean 2010. The “Spencer” chart you refer to is actually from Loehle 2007, and several more comprehensive reconstructions have been done since which show that the Medieval Warm Period was most likely not as warm as currently (as you - and certainly Spencer - should surely appreciate) and which do not show obvious evidence of any periodic variations. Referring to Guiot 2010 we see that additional forcing (beyond the known natural factors) is needed to give anything close to the same NH summertime temperatures as in the “Medieval Warm Period”. Servonnat 2010 and other related papers reinforce this. Incidentally the tree ring divergence problem that Spencer refers to has been recently addressed by workers such as Buntgen 2008, Esper 2010, and others. The so called 1470 year cycle you refer to, and the modeling work ( Braun 2005) you cite, is to do with glacial period rapid NH warming/cooling cycles that have since been found to have precursor events in the Southern hemisphere and have (as far as we know) nothing to do with recent trends. The existence of any solar contribution to these glacial "cycles", or rather events, is still being debated, as for some of the events a solar explanation simply does not fit, and some of the isotopic analyses used to give proxies for the solar variations are being questioned in the light of new evidence (for example from the Voyager mission , see Webber 2010) which implies greater impact of local climate on Be10 isotope formation rather than a purely solar cause. You should also be aware that rising CO2 has also been implicated as a causal factor in at least some of these DO events, for example see Capron 2010. Given current very high or record 12 month rolling average temperature records, ongoing updated decadal trends or multidecadal trends, from independent sources, it seems unlikely that global warming has "stopped".
  31. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #31: batsvensson at 06:58 AM on 14 August, 2010: FYI, Scotland (or the UK for that matter) did not set a new record low temperature last winter. A low of just below -20C was recorded, but it did not approach the all-time record low of -27.2C, set jointly in 1895, 1982 and 1995. I found it unusual that, despite truly remarkable synoptic conditionas at just the right time of year, the record was not even threatened, or that -20 wasn't reached more widely. Very interesting spot on the WUWT cherry picking michael, yet another example of them using selected data to push the wrong message...
  32. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    The map on WUWT is only for July 20-27, although it was posted on August 14. The map in figure 1 above is for the entire month of July. WUWT has apparently cherrypicked one week in the past six weeks of hot weather in Russia to make their claim that Russia is not hot.
    Without even looking at WUWT, I sniff the unmistakable odor of Steven Goddard ...
  33. Newcomers, Start Here
    Tut, tut John, there you go again with your misleading statements. You are way off beam with your “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”. 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. You claim that you look at the science on this blog but do you distort it in the same way that you distort what sceptics stand for? Best regards, Pete Ridley
  34. Newcomers, Start Here
    RSVP at 18:34 PM said "Investigating for myself, I find the idea of GHG as a cause for global warming is not listed as a skeptical argument. Just as it says, "It's the Sun.", there should be an argument, 'It's greenhouse gases'. " " Therefore this site is not about being skeptical, rather it is about defining anyone who argues with AGW as being skeptical. Quite perverse." I think you have missed an important point. Mainstream science is done with skepticism as part of the process. As John said in the first paragraph- "Skeptical Science is based on the notion that science by its very nature is skeptical." Scientists are constantly questioning data and conclusions and looking for weaknesses in the science that need correcting. The peer review process is more of this. This is not what happens in climate change denial. Presidential science advisor John Holdren has spoken clearly on this subject. In his own words: "We should really call them 'deniers' rather than 'skeptics', because they are giving the venerable tradition of skepticism a bad name. As my original reference to 'the venerable tradition of skepticism' indicates, I am in fact well aware of its valuable and indeed fundamental role in the practice of science. Skeptical views, clearly stated and soundly based, tend to promote healthy re-examination of premises, additional ways to test hypotheses and theories, and refinement of explanations and arguments. And it does happen from time to time - although less often than most casual observers suppose - that views initially held only by skeptics end up overturning and replacing what had been the 'mainstream' view. Appreciation for this positive role of scientific skepticism, however, should not lead to uncritical embrace of the deplorable practices characterizing much of what has been masquerading as appropriate skepticism in the climate-science domain. These practices include refusal to acknowledge the existence of large bodies of relevant evidence (such as the proposition that there is no basis for implicating carbon dioxide in the global-average temperature increases observed over the past century); the relentless recycling of arguments in public forums that have long since been persuasively discredited in the scientific literature (such as the attribution of the observed global temperature trends to urban-heat island effects or artifacts of statistical method); the pernicious suggestion that not knowing everything about a phenomenon (such as the role of cloudiness in a warming world) is the same as knowing nothing about it; and the attribution of the views of thousands of members of the mainstream climate-science community to 'mass hysteria' or deliberate propagation of a 'hoax'. The purveying of propositions like these by a few scientists who do or should know better - and their parroting by amateur skeptics who lack the scientific background or the motivation to figure out what’s wrong with them - are what I was inveighing against in the op-ed and will continue to inveigh against. The activities of these folks, whether witting in the case of the scientists or unwitting in the case of their gullible adherents, have nothing to do with respectable scientific skepticism."
  35. Newcomers, Start Here
    If this post is going to headline your site and introduce newcomers, you might want to work on this sentence from the first paragraph: "In contrast, climate skepticism look at small pieces of the puzzle, not the full picture." Either "skeptics look" or "skepticism looks," though I think the former is stronger, especially if you put scare quotes around "skeptics."
    Response: Thanks for the tip. I think I went for skeptics look then edited it. Have updated the text.
  36. 3 levels of cherry picking in a single argument
    No Antarctica shown in either HADCRUT or ECMWF maps? Are _both_leaving out the intense warming in the West Antarctic peninsula?
  37. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    fydijkstra, No, the use of a 12-month average helps reduce seasonal variability. I'm also unsure as to what you think the graph you link to demonstrates, other than you believe satellite data is somehow more accurate than ground readings. It isn't.
  38. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    thingadonta at 00:07 AM, depending on where you are, yes, it can get very cold in Indonesia especially if you go into some of the mountain areas. Weather and climatic conditions in Indonesia are dependent on conditions in the Indian Ocean more so than the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean based cycles affecting all the surrounding land masses, Indonesia, India, Africa and large parts of Australia. The Dutch compiled long term weather records, some of which show that droughts in areas close to the equator follow a similar pattern to droughts in south eastern Australia, Victoria included. Climatologists in Australia long rejected any connections, but the identification of the IOD (Indian Ocean Dipole) by Japanese researchers about a decade ago confirmed what many working independently of official bodies had long known.
  39. Newcomers, Start Here
    Interesting comment on CNN debate Gavin and Economist Sachs say we have the technology and act now. Michaels says we should just wait to see if technologies come up... Fareed Zakaria "Mr. Michaels, is your research funded by oil companies?" Patrick Michaels-Not much of it Fareed "Mr. Michaels, how much of your research is funded by oil companies?" Michaels-I don't know, 40%
  40. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    As a general remark I find it amusing how the figures in this article are "mine" and along those lines that NASA-GISS and WMO are "media." Nope, not mine, no more than photos of a Saturn V rocket lifting off suggest that a news photographer had constructed the rocket in the picture. As to "media", rather than refer to such a source instead it's of course better to go to the horse's mouth, in this case NASA-GISS and WMO, what's quoted from and linked to above. Laughter aside, let's not go down the path of imagining that the sources above are that darned liberal media, or that I've used a spreadsheet to make up some graphics friendly to a "case." What you see is what the best authorities have to say about this matter. Yes, that's right, authorities, they do exist, there are discernible differences in reliability between different sources of information, that difference being manifested in part by the actual amount of information conveyed to the public as well as an authority's relative honesty w/the public. The relative reliability of authority in part manifests itself by exhibiting characteristics of the formal sense of the word "circumspection," the trait of trying to take all things into account when making a judgment. Above, in the article and more particularly in the NASA-GISS and WMO articles linked there you can see a circumspect assessment of what weather today may tell us about climate. Conversely, at WUWT you may see an intentionally circumscribed picture in the form of an incomplete portrayal of temperature anomalies, this apparently conveyed as an attempt to sway public opinion. There's the difference between "media" and useful authority, in a nutshell; NASA-GISS and WMO try to convey as much information as possible, WUWT conveys only that which is suitable for making their case.
  41. Newcomers, Start Here
    #2: "If I go to... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skepticism ... I have "investigated" " Well, no. As I tell my students, wikipedia is not a credible scientific source. Steven Colbert demonstrated that when he caused the extinction of the African elephant. If you really want to investigate, try Google Scholar and even then cross-check for factual misrepresentations at all times. Hey, if it was easy, everybody with a blog would do it.
  42. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    #73: "last winter could then be said to be within a perfectly normal event that is within a natural variation with in the predicted trend. Therefore I find it strange that this summer, just because it is such an media attention, is not attributed to the very same variation within the very same trend." Please look at the temperature anomaly vs. time graph at the top of the page (figure 2). When you strip away all the newspaper jabber and anecdotal stories, you are still left with rising annual average temperatures. Seasonal highs and lows, el Nino/la Ninas fade into the background. Unfortunately, climate science is an awkward position, similar to the dilemma of earthquake prediction. Few seismologists will go on record saying X marks the spot and H is the hour, but a consensus agree that an earthquake is coming on the San Andreas. Oh wait, if a scientific consensus exists, then it can't be right.
  43. It's the ocean
    h-j-m, you can conduct your own experiment to demonstrate that the atmosphere transfers energy to the ocean: Step 1: Chill beer. Step 2: Pour beer into glass. Step 3: Sip beer, noticimg its temperature. Step 4: Wait three minutes. Step 5: Go to Step 3.
  44. Philippe Chantreau at 02:09 AM on 16 August 2010
    NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    "I believe the locals, coldest year in 35 years" Incidentally, the average age in Indonesia is 27. Anecdotal "evidence."
  45. It's the ocean
    If the oceans are warming in response to increased atmospheric warming due to anthropogenic green house gases then undoubtedly there has to be a mechanism (physical or chemical) resulting in a net heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean. So far I completely failed to find such a mechanism mentioned. By contrast, most ocean-atmosphere interactions mentioned (el Nino, Gulf stream, fueling extreme weather events) constitute a net heat transfer the other way round. Further more, the quote provided by Quietman "the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy”, clearly rules out any knowledge of a mechanism resulting in a net heat flux from atmosphere to ocean. But unless such a mechanism is found and sufficiently supported by evidence a warming of the oceans seems far more likely to cause global warming than anthropogenic increase in green house gases.
    Response: The mechanism of transferring heat from the atmosphere to the ocean is an increase in the amount of downward infrared radiation. Normally a certain amount of infrared radiation escapes out to space. But with greenhouse gases increasing in the atmosphere, this extra gas both absorbs and scatters the outgoing radiation and some of it returns to the Earth's surface.

    There are various independent lines of empirical evidence that this is happening. A series of papers analysing different satellite data find less infrared radiation escaping to space. Similarly, a number of different papers find more infrared radiation returning to the Earth's surface. So we have a mechanism for warming the oceans and evidence that this mechanism is indeed at play.

    For the record, I'm actually planning a post that specifically looks at the pattern of ocean warming and how it indicates human influence on climate - but just haven't had the time to write it yet.
  46. Waste heat vs greenhouse warming
    RSVP, Is this impression of your argument correct: the CO2 warming effect cancel itself out and the warming we see is an accumulated effect mistaken to be a GHG effect. By stating the GHG effect exist as counter argument those argument effectively shoots at the side of the target.
  47. Newcomers, Start Here
    Why I don't listen to thingadonta:
    Elephants are able to be domesticated, like horses, but zebras are not.
    Wikipedia: "In England, the zoological collector Lord Rothschild frequently used zebras to draw a carriage. In 1907, Rosendo Ribeiro, the first doctor in Nairobi, Kenya, used a riding zebra for house calls. In the mid 1800s, Governor George Grey imported zebras to New Zealand from his previous posting in South Africa, and used them to pull his carriage on his privately owned Kawau Island. A tamed zebra being ridden in East Africa Captain Horace Hayes, in "Points of the Horse" (circa 1893) compared the usefulness of different zebra species. In 1891, Hayes broke a mature, intact mountain zebra stallion to ride in two days time, and the animal was quiet enough for his wife to ride and be photographed upon. He found the Burchell's zebra easy to break, and considered it ideal for domestication, as it was immune to the bite of the tsetse fly. He considered the quagga well-suited to domestication due to being easy to train to saddle and harness.[6]"
    Zebras wont follow an alpha male, unlike horses, cows, sheep, or dogs.
    More wikipedia, on the harem structure of two of the three species of zebra: "Like most members of the horse family, zebras are highly social. Their social structure, however, depends on the species. Mountain zebras and plains zebras live in groups, known as 'harems', consisting of one stallion with up to six mares and their foals. Bachelor males either live alone or with groups of other bachelors until they are old enough to challenge a breeding stallion. When attacked by packs of hyenas or wild dogs, a zebra group will huddle together with the foals in the middle while the stallion tries to ward them off." Note: "harems" are built around the "alpha male" Thingadonta insists don't exist in zebra social groups. Don't get me started on dogs, modern research into wolves, and the whole "alpha male" fallacy there ...
  48. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    @doug at 08:23 AM on 14 August, 2010 My understanding is that the deviation of last winter may be due to a recent La Niña, hence last winter could then be said to be within a perfectly normal event that is within a natural variation with in the predicted trend. Therefore I find it strange that this summer, just because it is such an media attention, is not attributed to the very same variation within the very same trend. Why do I care about this? Well, this is what a scientist writes in the Guardian: "For climate scientists, having to continually rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme is all due to climate change is, at best, hugely frustrating and, at worst, enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening. Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically and swiftly over the coming decades." It makes at least me asking the question why someone would have any interest in overplaying these things in any direction.
  49. Newcomers, Start Here
    Oh good grief, what a surprise that thingadontas 'scientific' views are clouded by politics! How many scientists or engineers apply the 10% of theory in an application such as designing a car? People use what works. 10% of 'theory' might suggest perpetual motion is valid, but how many people apply that to building the world around us? You distort and manipulate the reality thingadonta. We all use the 90% of practical science because it serves us well and it is how we have achieved what we have achieved. Human achievement I am afraid isn't based on choice, instead it is built on what works 90% of the time!
  50. NASA-GISS: July 2010-- What global warming looks like
    Thingadonta, The map on WUWT is only for July 20-27, although it was posted on August 14. The map in figure 1 above is for the entire month of July. WUWT has apparently cherrypicked one week in the past six weeks of hot weather in Russia to make their claim that Russia is not hot. Figure 1 is not cherrypicked and reflects what the temperatures in Russia really are. Read WUWT very carefully, they do this on purpose to catch people who do not pay attention.

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