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Comments 49201 to 49250:

  1. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Doug, to help me resolve the issue:

    1. What type of computer (or phone) are you using?
    2. What browser?
    3. What is your "middle-click" configured to do?
    4. Can you paste into a comment:
      1. How the comment looks when you type it
      2. How the comment looks when you go into the source editor
      3. How the comment looks just after you leave the source editor
      4. How the comment looks after leaving the source editor
  2. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Though I've only scratched the surface of it so far, this is the best comments interface I've seen on the www.

    Only one point. I use Firefox which has a very useful real-time spellchecker add-on that works whenever I make a comment on a site—except it no longer seems to work when using this interface.     

  3. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    If I want to be bold I'ld try

    a few

    indents

    to see 

    where they

    go ...

     

    But I think I'll take a low road, while you take a high road.

    But coming to the source, I find no problem, whether in italics or underlined.

    To Doug Hutcheson, the above was just a test, and no doubt very testing.  The initial section was done by wysiwyg, while the line including the italics and underline was added in source.  One thing I did which you may have neglected was to start and finish the line in source with <p> and </p> respectively.  Also, to get tidy html code with wysiwyg, it is probably better to type your message, and then format afterwards rather than formating as you go.  Not sure about the other problems you mention.

  4. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #5

    Re "69 feet of sea level rise" article where Chris Mooney interviews Jason Box, the author of this claim. Such claim needs to be adequately qualified: Chris did not do it in this areticle. A substantial melt of both GIS and AIS is required of 69ft SLR. We can be almost sure that such event won't happen in this century and maybe even won't happen in the next century.

    NEEM2013 on RealClimate provides the empirical evidence that IS response to the warming is a slow process that may last milenia. Jason apparently disagrees with the results of this study. Certainly, the orbital variation forcing in eemain was different that today's CO2 global forcing, however given the relative slowness of IS melt as evidenced in NEEM2013, I think there is plenty of time to reverse current CO2 forcing (by ocean sequestration or maybe by ingenious humans who invent the industrial scale CO2 scraping from the air) before Jason's alarming prediction has the chance to eventuate.

    I'm expecting some discussions on that subject to follow and I'm looking forward...

  5. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    curiousd: Regarding your slide show "Leaky Sink Global Warming Analog," you might find the article "Relaxation theory of climate" interesting (Aleksei V Byalko 2012 Phys.-Usp. 55 103).

  6. Doug Hutcheson at 18:25 PM on 3 February 2013
    WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Both my last two comments arose because I was trying to reply to doug_bostrom @ 3, with the comment that I laughed at his cartoon and it reminded me of one that was circulating years ago, with the same Micrsosoft paper-clip saying "I see you are trying to write a suicide note: would you like to start the suicide note wizard?"

    This comment entirely typed into the 'Source' editor, lower pane and it looks good in the rendered pane, so I hope it posts OK. If it does, the moral might be to either use the Source editor alone, or the WYSIWYG editor alone, but don't try mixing methods.

    Hope these comments help someone else noticing this problem. (I'm a retired programmer: I can't help it if I have a fetish for finding bugs ... <grin>)

  7. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    When the "sophisticated AI" is added, will this include DWIM and DWIW! buttons?

  8. Doug Hutcheson at 18:13 PM on 3 February 2013
    WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    The problem seems to be with the source editor and the way it interacts with scratchpad memory.


    Also, try this: highlight the name of the person making a comment and middle-click to type it into the 'Basic' editor. You will notice that what is pasted is a hyperlink to the person's name, not just the text of the name as it used to do.

    Now, click on the 'Source' tab and look at the HTML: on my system, the HTML is OK at this stage.

    Now, click back on the 'Basic' tab. The editor pane on my system now shows an icon indicating there is malformed HTML and clicking on 'Source' now shows the HTML is, indeed, screwed up.

    Moral 1: don't look at the 'Source' pane. Ever.

    Moral 2: don't highlight a commenter's name and try to save yourself some typing by middle-clicking into the editor pane, as you will end up with a kinda-correct hyperlink to the person's name, instead of just plain text.

  9. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    where did those colors come from?

  10. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Hey! it seems makes one can use sub and sup tags simultaneously, if one doesn't have anything substantial to say. bolding italics test


     

    human fingerprint

    [Ðø hjumän fingõÿpÿint is mässiv]. 

  11. Doug Hutcheson at 17:43 PM on 3 February 2013
    WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Further to my comment @ 2 above, I have been able to replicate the behaviour:

    1. Type something into the edit field, under the 'Basic' tab
    2. Highlight it
    3. Click 'Insert'
    4. Click 'Create link' and type (or paste, in my case) a URL
    5. Click 'Source' and note that the html is pretty garbled
    6. Try to correct the HTML
    7. Click 'Basic' and notice such things as an icon indicating there is a dangling tag, and/or the item that should be a hyperlink is only half a link and half plain text, or other strangeness. Also note that the changes you made under 'Source' have had no effect
    8. Click back on 'Source': on my system, the HTML is now badly screwed up and all my source editing has gone to God.

    Moral seems to be "don't mess with the HTML created automatically by the editor and, in fact, don't even look at it using the 'Source' tab". I have not yet determined if creating an entire post, using the 'Source' editor alone, works properly.

    I discovered this, by creating a post using 'Basic' and 'Insert', then being interested to see the HTML generated. Just looking at the source seems to be the bringer of plagues upon my coding.

    I have not looked at the source of this comment, so I hope it posts OK.

  12. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Other terrific new features will be rolled out Real Soon Now. Sophisticated AI will parse your comments as you type, making it easy and fun to avoid making embarrassing errors in public.

  13. Climate Sensitivity Single Study Syndrome

    (OffTopic) David B Benson got it correct here. :-)

  14. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    One other thing....In regards to my post number 7 above, the people in this thread might have an interest in my posted "Leaky Sink Global Warmig Analog" by clicking on that title at this site:

     

    http://www.phys.uconn.edu/people/faculty/storrs/pease/

  15. Doug Hutcheson at 15:57 PM on 3 February 2013
    WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Thanks for this, it is appreciated.

    I did have a glitch with a link I inserted using the Link button, then tried to edit using the Source tab: every time I returned to the Basic tab, my hand-coded changes were removed (yes, my change was valid code). In the end, I had to use the Unlink button, then switch to Source and insert the link through HTML, which worked fine. Just a petty teething trouble that most people would never notice.

  16. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    I taught Physics of the Environment at my University for a number of years, just quitting this last semester to concentrate on other climate change activities. The course I taught is aimed at a 101level, so that these students are probably not science majors. Therefore, we need to go over units, metric system, force, work, energy, and so on, in addition to doing environment and climate, all in one semester. The approach has recently been to teach abbreviated Physics 101, tack on environment, and refer to the excellent text  "Energy, Environment, and Climate" by Wolfson, for special topics.  I have ordered the recent text by Farmer and Cook, and look forward to its arrival next week.  I have a second job involving coordinating basic honors physics taught  for University credit  (not advanced placement) in various high schools. I suspect there may be fears amongst high school teachers of personal consequences from teaching much about global warming, and I hope to find out more about this. 

  17. It's the sun

    Jason B @1048, the most commented thread would have to be the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics thread, with (currently) 1424 comments.  I suspect this one comes second, although I have not done a survey.

  18. It's the sun

    JasonB...  I was thinking exactly the same thing.  Literally, this is probably THE most clearly debunked myths there is in the climate debate.  It's stunning that anyone is still clinging to it.

  19. It's the sun

    Sabre @1045...  Do you honestly believe that the broad scientific community hasn't already considered everything you've stated here before coming to the overwhelming conclusion that human are primarily responsibe for the rise of global temperature of the past 40 years?

    Just curious.

  20. It's the sun

    Just out of curiosity, what's the most-commented post here at SkS? This would have to be a contender, which strikes me as amazing because it's one of the most obviously wrong myths yet apparently one of the most fervently argued.

  21. It's the sun

    DSL,

    Apparently some people don't feel uncomfortable commenting on posts they haven't read. It gets a bit ridiculous when the post you'd provide them with a link to in order to dispel their misconception is the one they've commented on!

  22. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #5

    Topic 2: Philippines and climate change, laws only don't work: see renewable energy act.  It is implementing the laws. So far only coal power has been implemented.

  23. It's the sun

    Sabre, you did read the intermediate and advanced articles tabbed above, yes?  Yes, global temp track solar variation quite well until about 1960. Where is it argued that it doesn't?  What happens after 1960, as TSI drops from the modern max, and temp just keeps on rising.  You're familiar with Pasini et al. (2012), yes?  And the same Usoskin (2005) points out "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source." 

  24. WYSIWYG Comments Feature

    Thanks Bob Sphaerica!  It's easy as . . .


    ABC
    DoReMe
    123

    In-tag style, too -- nice.

  25. Doug Hutcheson at 13:18 PM on 3 February 2013
    The Climate Show #32: a Cook's tour of the Aussie heat

    Watching this video was an hour well spent. Thanks, guys.

  26. Sabretruthtiger at 12:45 PM on 3 February 2013
    It's the sun

    Why are people even debating this The empirical evidence in favor of the solar explanation is overwhelming.

    Dozens of peer-reviewed studies have found a very high degree of correlation (.5 to .8) between solar-magnetic activity and global temperature going back many thousands of years (Bond 2001, Neff 2001, Shaviv 2003, Usoskin 2005, and many others listed below). In other words, solar activity “explains,” in the statistical sense, 50 to 80% of past temperature change.

    Such a high degree of correlation over such long time periods implies causality, which can only go one way. Global temperature cannot be driving solar activity, so there must be some mechanism by which solar activity is driving or modulating global temperature change. The high degree of correlation also suggests that solar activity is the primary driver of global temperature on every time scale studied (which is pretty much every time scale but the Milankovitch cycle).

    In contrast, records of CO2 and temperature reveal no discernable warming effect of CO2. There is a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature, but with CO2 changes following temperature changes by an average of about 800 years (Caillon 2003), indicating that it is temperature change that is driving atmospheric CO2 change (as it should, since warming oceans are able to hold less CO2). This does not rule out the possibility that CO2 also drives temperature, and in theory a doubling of CO2 should cause about a 1 degree increase in temperature before any feedback effects are accounted, but feedbacks could be negative (dampening rather than amplifying temperature forcings), so there no reason, just from what we know about the greenhouse mechanism, that CO2 has to be a significant player. The one thing we can say is that whatever the warming effect of CO2, it is not detectable in the raw CO2 vs. temperature data.

    This is in glaring contrast to solar activity, which lights up like a neon sign in the raw data. Literally dozens of studies finding .5 to .8 degrees of correlation with temperature. (-snip-). RF for CO2 is entered as ___ W/m^2 while RF for total solar effects is entered as ___ W/m^2. [I'm not going to quote the actual numbers, but yeah, the ratio is an astounding 40 to 1, up from 14 to 1 in AR4, which listed total solar forcing as 0.12 W/m^2, vs. 1.66 for CO2.]

    So the 50% driver of global temperature according to mountains of temperature correlation data is assumed to have 1/40th the warming effect of something whose warming effect is not even discernable in the temperature record. (-snip-).

    (-snip-)

     

    Moderator Response: [DB] Off-topic and inflammatory rhetoric snipped.
  27. Don Gisselbeck at 12:26 PM on 3 February 2013
    Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?

    It looks like the  denialosphere have missed another good cherry pick, the Stanton Glacier in Montana. When I first skied It in mid September 2007, it was nearly all ice. The last few years,it has been almost entirely firn covered in late September or early October. I can link to pictures and video if anyone is interested.

  28. Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?

    Thanks for the explanations, Bob and mspelto, that makes sense and helps greatly. 

  29. 16  ^  more years of global warming

    Kevin C @ 123

    Not really what I was saying. Ocean enthalpy is all over the map from Trenberth's dropoff and "missing heat" to Levitus's steady rise. Finally found the time to plot Foster and Ramshorf against Levitus as I mentioned earlier to curiousd. Not conclusive but shows similar structure.

    http://geosciencebigpicture.com/2013/02/02/structural-sim…ocean-enthalpy/

  30. Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?

    It is useful to look at the Swiss Glacier Commission results from 2010 when they noted three advancing glaciers (Kaltwasser, Sardona and Trient. all retreated significantly in 201 and had before 2010 so this was more of a blip than a trend.  Similarly the one glacier, Mont Durand,  that advanced in 2011 had retreated substantially the previous several years. In 2012 Norway reported of the 28 glaciers observed four advanced, but of these only one had advance in 2011 as well.  There are a few advancing glaciers that sustain the advance.  Of the 200 glaciers I have worked on only one Taku Glacier has a sustained advance, and this is the result of filling in its fjord with sediment and the resulting cessation of calving, like paying off your mortgage, changed its balance Pelto et al (2008).

  31. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    Dessler's book is a good introduction to climate science.  One of many attributess that make Farmer and Cook's textbook unique is the treatment of denialism in climate science in two chapters, Chapters 23 and 24 (Chapter 23 - "Understanding Climate Denial" and Chapter 24 - " Rebuttals to Climate Myths") each of which may be found at Springer.com/environment/book/978-94-007-5756-1.

  32. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #5

    William:

    One of the articles that slipped under my radar this week is In Energy Taxes, Tools to Help Tackle Climate Change by Eduardo Porter, New York Times, Jan 29, 2013.  

    In this article, Porter provides a frank assessment of the propsects for enacting a national tax on carbon in the US anytime soon. Right now, it doesn't appear to be on any elected offical's radar screen -- including President Obama's.

    What President Obama says about climate change in his upcoming State of the State address will tell us more about what he intends to do - at least in the near term. 

  33. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    Andrew Dessler 2011 Introduction to Modern Climate Change (recommended by Steve Easterbrook) is a good starting point.

  34. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #5

    Are we seeing a paradigm shift.   I doubt it but live in hope.  Why don't we simply adopt Jim Hansen's Tax and Dividend solution.  If the US of A did this, the dynamics are such that other countries would have to follow suit.  Besides, from a politician's point of view it is a tremendous vote catcher.  Win win all around.

    http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2009/12/jim-hansens-climate-change-solution.html

  35. Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?

    John Russell:

    Every glacier has its own mass balance - so in that context, yes, every one is different. Generalizations are possible, though. Every glacier also is not uniform over its entire extent - net accumulation of mass will occur over part of the glacier, net loss will occur in other parts. Combined with slope and gravity, this is what causes a glacier to flow.

    Typically, a glacier will have an accumuation zone and an ablation zone (ablation = losses due to melt, calving, and/or sublimation/evaporation). In a typical mountain glacier, the upper reaches are accumulating mass, the glacier is flowing downhill, and the lower reaches are losing mass. There is a dividing line between the albation and accuulation zone which is significant on an annual scale, but there are also seasonal effects, too.

    How a glacier's mass balance responds to a shift in climate depends on the effects in both the ablation and accumulation zones. A warming climate will usually increase losses in the ablation zone where losses are already greated than accumulation. In the accumulation zone, it can depend on just how cold the zone was before. A very cold accumulation zone with little snowfall may see an increase in snowfall and thus an increase in accumulation with little increase (if any) in melt, whereas a warmer accumulation zone may see less snow (and perhaps more rain) and a reduction in accumulation with increased melting.

    More melt/calving in the ablation zone combined with less accumulation in the accumulation zone will obviously cause recession. More ablation plus more accumulation - obviously depends on the details, but will cause glacier advance if accumulation overpowers increased ablation.

    Keep in mind that this is not a case of "glaciers will be claimed to show global warming effects no matter what they do" - it is clear that the processes are fairly well understood and there is a narrow set of conditions where warming can lead to glaciers growing. The broad, sweeping generalzation is that warmer climates will cause most glaciers to recede.

  36. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    Ruddiman's book is indeed a fine textbook; however it is not written nor is it appropriate for an introductory science course for college students.  Introductory courses need to emphasize principles and the current climate,  As Ruddiman's title states, his book emphasizes "Earth's Climate - Past and Future."  The emphasis of the Farmer and Cook textbook (Volume 1) is on current climate. Volume 2 will emphasize Earth's climate history. A Volume 3, if written, will emphasize Earth's future climate using projections based on past and present climates and "what if" scenarios.

  37. Glaciers still shrinking in 2011, how have contrarians claimed the opposite?

    Just out of interest, is there a general reason why some glaciers are kicking against the trend and growing, or is it a different reason in every case? Either way do we know why?

    And thanks for the new comment interface as well, guys—a great improvement.

     

  38. A Change in the Weather at 01:46 AM on 3 February 2013
    Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

    JasonB @40: I agree. The conservative thing to do at this point is to treat fossil fuels as an endowment. They are the capital that bootstrapped modern society into being; now we should live off the dividends rather than plunder the principal. We don't have to go back to living in caves (and obviously there aren't enough to go around), but we do have to reserve fossil fuel use for those applications for which there are no reasonable substitutes.

    Reasonable is not the same thing as economic. Economics without a carbon price are false. For example, we can make a car that doesn't use fossil fuels. It's not cheap in today's economics, but the value would be commensurate with its true cost. Which would mean that car ownership would be pretty limited. Which would mean a basic transformation of social structures and relationships.

    Same thing for electricity. We can still have it. It'll just be in much smaller amounts until we can do the R&D that extends our non-fossil capability. This R&D would be one of the uses of fossil fuel for which there is no substitute--though it would need to be transparently managed and subject to oversight.

    We can do these things willingly, or we can continue to waste our endowment and end up like many a trust-fund baby: depleted and unable to cope with the remainder of our now-pauperized existence.

  39. Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

    Following up on the cite by Paul D is this article from the BBC which covers the bat study specifically.  It sounds like the one Ranyl was referring to.  It recommends minor adjustments in location of home wind turbines.  This does not appear to be a serious problem for bats.  Are there any citations that suggest wind turbines are a serious problem for bats? 

    When wind turbines were first deployed there was a lot of noise about raptors.  I have heard little of that in recent years. Can current data be cited by those who think this is a problem?


    In my browser (Firefox) the preview option is gone.  I like to check to ensure links are OK.  Spelling errors are also not underlined.

    Moderator Response: TC: You may not have noticed, but SkS comments have now been converted to WYSIWYG. The second tab allows inserting links, pictures and tables; or if you insist on doing things the hard way, you can use the third tab, and edit in source. No doubt more information will be forthcoming soon.
  40. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    The book places the comptemporary climate debate within the far longer perspective of climactic changes at millenial and even greater time scales. There is a lot around climate reconstructions and great sections outlining the differences between anthropogenic versus natural climate change. Highly recommended.

  41. Introducing Climate Change Science to College Students

    Could I pipe-up and recommend this excellent textbook I just read most of for an introductory climate science course on my Masters...

    W.F. Ruddiman. (2007) Earth's Climate: Past and Future (2nd edition). Freeman and Co., NY.

     

  42. Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

    vroomie:

    Please show supporting documents to some of your assertions, such as:
    "[sic] As bats well in a recent in Scotland small scale wind turbines reudced bat activity by 50%."

    There is genuine research regarding this:

    www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-20209896


  43. Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

    Re Ranyl

    I don't think anyone is saying technology is a 'hero'.
    All solutions have their bad points and new technology requires time to mature and develop. But you have to use it first before you can fix the problems.

    For instance, would new radar have been developed to handle the problems of wind farms, if wind farms had remained on the drawing board and had never been constructed? The answer is no.
    Would we have rules and guidelines about electricity installations if we hadn't started installing electricity in homes? The answer is no.

    Deploying any new technology will mean something or someone will lose out. But given that humans are extremely unlikely to give up technology and knowledge, then you have to deploy the technology that does the least damage. Renewable energy is the compromise between human self centred desires and and the need to do minimum damage to the environment that provides resources to create those desires.

    Regarding birds, cats and wind turbines. I recently did a back of the envelope calculation and worked out that if all of the electricity in the USA was generated by wind energy, the number of birds killed by the turbines would still be negligible compared with the damage pet cats do, or even buildings and other human built structures. If you had to draw a bar chart, wind turbines wouldn't register on the graph when compared with the bar for pet cats.

    Also in the UK the biggest danger most raptors have is from a human armed with a gun. There is a growing bank of knowledge regarding bats and birds now and wind farms, so numerous solutions and guidelines are being drawn up.

  44. It's the sun

    Robert Wagner @1041, below are 11 year running averages of Gistemp (as used in figure 1 above) post 1950, along with 11 year running averages of RSS and UAH data, all offset to have a common baseline of 1981-2010.  As can clearly be seen, the trends of the three are virtualy indistinguishable.  Your primary claim is, therefore, patently false.

    I will also note that your supposition that the satellite records, by virtue of being satelite records, are more accurate records is unfounded.  It is well known that the surface temperature record needs adjustment for the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect, Time of Observation (TOBS), along with changes of instruments over time.  The satellite record, however, invovles adjustments for changes of instruments (as one Satellite is replaced by another), for the fact that the raw data includes a large measure of the cooling stratosphere in its observations, for the fact that the time of observation at any location changes as the satellite orbits , for bias arising from the properties of different surfaces, and their altitudes; and so on.  Far more, and far more mathematically challenging mathematical adjustments are required to take raw satellite records and turn them into a temperature record than are required for the surface record.

    Below are a list of the main corrections of the main, known errors in the UAH record that have been needed over time (and acknowledged by Roy Spenser).  There has been a scientific paper published pointing out yet another apparently needed correction that Dr Spencer does not yet agree with.  Only time will tell if he has finally got it about right, or whether yet more corrections will be needed before UAH can finally be considered as accurate as the surface record:

  45. 2012 Shatters the US Temperature Record. Fox, Watts, and Spencer Respond by Denying Reality

    O.K.   To do this (as in my comment 52 above about finding the actual version 2 data for CONUS as now archived) they told me  I need to get into the business of handling large zipped files.  I am going to plug away.  I may or may not be able to do this, but will learn something in any case.

  46. Ice age predicted in the 70s

    Bad news John/Dana/whoever is responsible for this page--the link to the video is dead. Maybe replace it with potholer54's video here

  47. Doug Hutcheson at 13:46 PM on 2 February 2013
    It's the sun

    Robert Wagner @ 1042, those same satellite measurements you claim to be accurate show a TOA energy imbalance: more energy entering the Earth system than leaving it. What do you think is happening to all that extra energy Earth is absorbing, if it is not warming the biosphere?

  48. It's the sun

    "The most accurate measurements, satellite measurements, the ones the Clinate Scientists seem to choose to ignore shows flat temperatures from 1980 to 2000, with a few spikes"


    Nonsense.  UAH, a satellite measurement from climate "skeptics" Roy Spencer and John Christy, shows about .22*C of warming from 1980 to 2000.  From 1980 to the present it shows about .42*C.  You are completely wrong. 

    "As recent as 2008 we were at or below the level of 1980."


    Nonsense again.  2008 was no where near as cool as 1980. 


    " If the best the (-snip-) can do is rely on highly innacurate ground measurements they don't have much of a case."

    The ground measurements agree very well with the satellite data, which you are obviously are unfamiliar with.  Nothing you said above is true.  Talk about a . (-snip-) 

    Moderator Response: (Rob P) Inflammatory snipped.
  49. It's the sun

    That chart shows temperatures continuously and sharpely increasing since 1980, that is pure nonsense.  The most accurate measurements, satellite measurements, the ones the Clinate Scientists seem to choose to ignore shows flat temperatures from 1980 to 2000, with a few spikes. Then the reletively volcano free 2000 through today shows an increase of 0.2 degrees. As recent as 2008 we were at or below the level of 1980. If the best the (-snip-)highlighted by the original article starting this thread. http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

    Moderator Response: (Rob P) Inflammatory snipped.
  50. Climate Scientists Erring on the Side of Least Drama

    ranyl,

    I provided a link to a post here on cumulative emissions specifically because the science tells us that we do not have to stop all forms of carbon emission immediately or we're toast. Yet your subsequent post repeated this erroneous claim as if you hadn't followed the link. Please read it.

    The fact is, the more we emit in the long run, the higher the risk of dangerous climate change. But it's far better to invest some short term carbon use into long term carbon reduction (e.g. manufacturing PV and wind turbines) than to continue business as usual while moaning that people keep on emitting carbon and refuse to live in caves.

    There are a lot of people in the world who could quite rightly claim that they are entitled to higher levels of energy consumption and better standards of living because they weren't the ones who caused the current problem by doing so in the past. We have to expect them to continue to want to do raise their standards of living. What we can do is invest in technologies that will allow them (and us) to do so while emitting as little carbon as possible. Renewables are one way forward; efficiency is another; curbing to some extent the wasteful lifestyles of the developed world is probably a third. But let's invest the carbon budget that the science tells us we do have wisely.

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