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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 49851 to 49900:

  1. Doug Hutcheson at 13:15 PM on 14 January 2013
    Skeptical Science Upgrade
    Hooray! Wysiwyg rules! CO(subscript 2) coming to a comment editor near you Real Soon Now (I hope). Thanks, DB et al.
  2. Doug Hutcheson at 13:11 PM on 14 January 2013
    2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real
    Great to see the sceptical view that we are in a cooling phase. Sen. Inhofe must be so amazingly sciency that he does not need to examine the temperature records, in order to come to his conclusion. Another cup of Tea for you, sir, or has it gone cold?
  3. Doug Hutcheson at 13:01 PM on 14 January 2013
    Skeptical Science Upgrade
    Will the change include being able to use <sub> and <sup>, or any other HTML tags, in comments?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Complex editing/formatting and WYSIWYG commenting functionalities will be rolled out to the comment boxes for users. This is in the works.
  4. 2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real
    Peter Sinclair is one of out greatest assets. This series gets stronger and stronger.
  5. funglestrumpet at 08:01 AM on 14 January 2013
    Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday will continue to deny climate change until long after the sea-level has risen above the roof of the British House of Commons and Big Ben is seen by shipping as an hazard to navigation. (The British House of Commons under water? Oh well, ‘it is an ill wind ...!’)
  6. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #2
    William @#1 "Giya" is spelled Gaia. :-)
  7. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    fpjohn @5, as you yourself have noted on another thread, this article rebutted Lomborg's latest before it was even published.
  8. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    If, as you say, El Niño has such a significant effect on the global annual temperature, what is the value of the UK's Met Office 5 year forecast? If in the year 2017 we have a super El Niño or for that matter a super El Niña what will comparing actual and forecast mean? It seems to me that decadal forecasts are really only useful when done as hindcasts, that is when the ENSO and possibly volcano effects are well known.
  9. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    To add: - plastic greenhouses (which don't block any IR) work pretty well, so it can't be the IR that keep things warm. - glass greenhouses, in which the glass does affect IR, tend to reduce the incoming solar more than they increase incoming IR, once the glass gets typically dirty. So, the net effect of the glass on radiative input tends to be negative for dirty glass. - all the latent heat that results from evaporating water in the greenhouse soil is kept inside (unless vented). Greenhouses are awfully humid, in addition to being warm.
  10. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    Wig4, ...short version of Tom's answer... A greenhouse works by interfering with both infrared radiation and convection, but the important point with reference to the topic at hand is convection. You are taking umbrage at the use of the word "block" in place of "absorption." That's just picking nits, and the use of the latter term does not better clarify the argument for the reader. To the sort of person reading the Intermediate rebuttal, the term "blocked" is perfectly clear, especially when considered in concert with the graphic presented. It's about communication.
  11. A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    Bernard J.:
    It's a thermodynamic truth that many people, even on the side of the consensus, need to hear and understand.
    Since CBDunkerson and I are both on the side of the consensus, I want to be sure I didn't misunderstand his(?) use of "business as usual" (BAU). CBDunkerson:
    The claim that environmental problems can only be solved by giving up modern technology, individual freedom, et cetera is a lie that deniers have told themselves so often that they take it as inviolate truth even in the face of observed reality to the contrary.
    If BAU means "no one has to freeze to death in the dark if fossil fuels are replaced by renewables", then that's defensible. If BAU means "the transition to a sustainable economy won't reduce average buying power (what's usually meant by 'standard of living')", then that's frank denial. The professional AGW deniers don't care if a few 47%-ers freeze to death in the dark, and they don't worry about average buying power either. To them, BAU means "My own buying power will be reduced if fossil fuels are replace by renewables". Changing BAU will make winners and losers, and they'll be losers. Of course it's OK with me if the Koch brothers lose some income, but who really thinks the 1% will be the only losers? You and I might be willing to give up some of our own hard-earned buying power if it reduces the risk of climate catastrophe; we'll leave the hybrid in the garage and take the bus. We may even be willing to pay extra, to keep people now on the edge of poverty from sliding over it. As for the rest of the middle class, not all of them are as sanguine as we are about loss of buying power. Some accept the scientific consensus but refuse to change the way they live, perhaps believing that the impacts of AGW will mostly affect other people far away. Others think arguments from consequences refute arguments from evidence. Some, with no worse than average understanding of science as an institution, are willing to believe that AGW is all a hoax, and that consensus supporters are conspiring to impose world socialism. We roll our eyes, but we should ask ourselves what it will really take to keep the impacts of AGW from getting worse -- never mind establishing a truly sustainable economy. This comment is already too long, so I'll let Naomi Klein answer:
    The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system. As British blogger and Heartland regular James Delingpole has pointed out, “Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation.” Heartland’s Bast puts it even more bluntly: For the left, “Climate change is the perfect thing…. It’s the reason why we should do everything [the left] wanted to do anyway.” Here's my inconvenient truth: they aren't wrong.
  12. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    fpjohn @5 - we will have a rebuttal to a similar argument by Ridley and Murdoch this upcoming week. If I have time I'll try to incorporate some of Lomborg's nonsense. Unfortunately the deniers have been very busy writing BS media articles lately, and it's very hard to keep up.
  13. No warming in 16 years
    Another factor that would be nice to mention is aerosols from human activities. I believe those would have contributed to warmning during the 1980's and 1990's, and to a slight cooling during the 2000's. With the effect of those aerosols subtracted, there might even have been a slight acceleration in warming the last decade.
  14. Food Security: the first big hit from Climate Change will be to our pockets
    This piece is a great pre-rebuttal to Lomborg's new engenous article on Climate related crop failures which he discounts. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/global-warming-and-agricultural-production-by-bj-rn-lomborg yours Frank Johnston
  15. A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    Mal Adapted:
    I'm sorry, but anyone thinks business as usual can go on is in denial.
    Don't be sorry. It's a thermodynamic truth that many people, even on the side of the consensus, need to hear and understand. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
  16. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    This is off-topic as I can no longer find an email link to a moderator. Delete as necessary. Lomborg has a new red herring piece on Slate which makes light of climate change related reductions in crop yields LINK Can this be rebutted and is there someone to do it? Pass the linguine? The best to you all in the New Year. yours Frank Johnston
    Moderator Response: [RH] Hot linked URL that was breaking page formatting.
  17. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    @ sotolith this is why end points are not used. if the analysis started or ended at slightly different years you could come to the exact opposite conclusion (if you used end points). the trend is important, the wiggles are not
  18. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    sotolith7 #2 The chart (Figure 1) is relative to 1901-2000. Americal Meteorological Society statement on climate change gives 0.8C warming 1901-2010, with 0.5C of that coming since 1979. The chart appears consistent with the AMS statement.
  19. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    But while it may confirm the trend, doesn't it show significantly less warming? If you take the end points, roughly half-as-much (0.2 instead of 0.4).
  20. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    global surface temps and sst going back to the 1880s clearly shows repeating ~30 year trends.
    smerby, alarm bells ring out when I see statements like these. It sounds like you're using that unreliable statistical tool, the eyecrometer. Do you understand the methods required to correctly determine the existence of cyclicity in a dataset? And the tests required to evaluate significance of such a signal. Have you considered variations in forcings (volcanic, aerosol, increasing ghgs), which can create the illusion of cyclicity? And how to test this? And why are your so-called 'troughs' - not that there is even a statistically significant change in the recent warming rate - getting rapidly warmer over time? I would suggest you can't rely on your eyecrometer to tell you the "truth". In science, there are better methods...
  21. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Ray, I'd guess that's the case; HadGEM3 seems to do a better job in general though both fail to nail the 1997-8 super El Nino - as I said in the post such things are notoriously awkward in terms of predictability, despite the level of scientific knowledge today. In turn, that creates an interesting possibility. What if there was another super El Nino in a few years' time? Looking at the temperature records, the difference between 1996 and 1998 is around 0.3C: given the mean HadGEM3 forecast figure of 0.43C relative to 1971-2000 climatology, such an event in the next 5 years could produce a spike of getting on for 0.75C. At that point, of course, the temperature would be blamed by the usual suspects on natural variation, followed in the years to come by Daily Mail articles proclaiming how global warming stopped in 2015!!
  22. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Smerby: Look a bit further back to 1850, and then look at this graph. (Or don't, the site is down, but here is the link for when it is back up.) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/. Alternative version: The dip from 1880-1900 is not part of a cycle - it is the result of a series of major volcanic eruptions. Once you take out this effect the bulk of the cycle vanishes - it's mostly a coincidence.
  23. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby @86, there are have been at most 2 cycles of that pattern since 1880. That is far to few repetitions to infer a regular cycle. If you look at either HadCRUT or BEST prior to 1880, the 60 year pattern breaks down and is not in evidence. Further, it is highly dubious that it is in evidence prior to that period in paleodata. Hence the inference that it is not only a regular cycle, but strong enough to counter global warming in the medium terms is completely unsupported.
  24. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Thanks for the feedback. That graph I put up with global surface temps and sst going back to the 1880s clearly shows repeating ~30 year trends. Based on that graph, the leveling off of surface temperatures for the past 10 years falls right into step with these repeating trends. Could this trend continue for the next 20 years, I think it could. What would knock this repeating cycle of global surface temperatures off track?
  25. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    Wig4@104: 1) A variety of experiments have been performed by people attempting to quantify the strength of the effect of trapping IR radiation by glass in warming greenhouses. Most famously, this was done by R. W. Wood in 1909, who found no measurable effect. The lack of measurable effect has been misinterpreted by Wood and others as a refutation of the atmospheric greenhouse effect. In fact, while some have repeated Wood's experiment and found no measurable effect, others have found a 15 to 20 degree C increase in temperature relative to control when trapping IR radiation. That 15-20 degrees C is, however, less than half of the total increase in temperature. Further, in greenhouses in which the presence of vegetation limits the increase in temperature of the surface, and hence the increase in IR radiation from the surface, the effect will be even smaller. It follows that the prevention of air circulation carrying away excess heat is the major cause of increased temperatures in greenhouses. Ergo, greenhouses primarily work by "by blocking convection" as indicated in the original article. 2) Your argument devolves down to a mixture of garbled facts and outright errors. Let's start with the basics: a) The total upwelling IR flux at the surface is greater than the incoming SW flux times (1-albedo); b) The total upwelling IR flux at the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA) approximately equals the incoming SW flux times (1-albedo). c) The difference between the upwelling IR flux at the surface and that at the TOA is the atmospheric greenhouse effect; and it can only exist because components of the atmosphere absorb IR radiation from below (lower atmosphere and or surface). c') If components of the atmosphere did not absorb IR radiation, then by necessity the upwelling TOA IR flux would equal or exceed that at the surface, resulting in no atmospheric greenhouse effect. c") If the atmosphere did not absorb more upwelling IR radiation from the surface than the atmosphere alone emitted at the TOA, then by necessity the upwelling TOA IR flux would equal or exceed that at the surface, resulting in no atmospheric greenhouse effect. c"') If the atmosphere absorbs more more upwelling IR radiation from the surface than it alone emits at the TOA, then be necessity the upwelling TOA IR flux will be less than that at the surface, and hence there will be an atmospheric greenhouse effect. From the points above, it is clear that atmospheric absorption of IR radiation is necessary for the existence of an atmospheric greenhouse effect. Ergo, as a simplified account, saying that the "atmospheric greenhouse works primarily by blocking thermal radiation" is sufficiently accurate. Radiation of IR radiation by the atmosphere reduces the strength of the atmospheric greenhouse effect, and in the special and unusual case where the atmosphere is warmer than the surface, will result in a cooling of the surface. Typically, however, the atmosphere is cold enough that there is a substantial atmospheric greenhouse effect, and the colder the atmosphere the stronger that effect will be. I refer you to my article, Warm Earth, Cold Atmosphere for a more detailed discussion, including examples of "proven, measured quantifications" of this effect. Finally, I note that IR radiation from the atmosphere is restricted in the range from which it will radiate, with a large a smaller atmospheric window from which there is essentially no radiation (or absorption) except in the presence of clouds. Further, I will note that the atmospheric greenhouse effect is so-called for historical reasons, and nothing save a foolish pedantry is served by railing against history.
  26. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Looking at Figures 2 and 3. the slope at the later portions of the white line on the two graphs are markedly different, a difference that I don't think has been discussed here. Exactly what is that white line showing and why the differences? Presumably these differences are due to the differences between HadGEM3 and HadCM3. Is that correct? If so and as HadCM3 has been used in earlier predictions, is it not possible that in the future, predictions from HadGEM3 will be shown to be different from those of the succeeding generation of climate models? Should the answer be in the affirmative this could indicate the science of climate change may be somewhat less settled than has been suggested. Whatever, I'd very much appreciate elightenment on the questions I've asked re the "white line"
  27. Nature Confirms Global Warming and Temperature Record Accuracy
    One picture is a 1000 words or so... http://xkcd.com/54/
  28. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Rob @81 I wonder whether people like smerby, don't appreciate the full extent of the sources of evidence for climate sensitivity. In other words smerby might be assuming (sorry if I'm putting words into your mouth, smerby) that future temperature rise projections come from a climate sensitivity value that is solely determined from the temperature record for the last 30 years and therefore such projections assume that there are no long term (multi-decadal) oscillations. (Conversely, of course, smerby would then believe that if multi-decadal oscillations did exist and the last 30 years was on an up-swing, then future temperature rise projections would be over-estimated). In actual fact only a very few of the methods of determining climate sensitivity use the recent temperature record, and so the supposition of a multi-decadal oscillation does not alter the long term trend.
  29. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    The reality, of course, is very different from how those in denial about AGW and fake skeptics are trying to spin this story. As always, it is best to go to the source. Here is a BBC Radio 4 segment in which they try and set the record straight, but without actually bringing themselves to admit they messed up or apologizing to the Met Office. I would encourage people who are still convinced in the myth being promoted by those in denial to listen to the words of Prof. Julia Slingo, who is the chief scientist of the agency who actually made the experimental forecast.
  30. Doug Hutcheson at 10:16 AM on 13 January 2013
    A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    Mal Adapted @ 25, I don't quite agree with your final sentence. I don't think anyone expecting BAU is in denial, necessarily. The problem is more subtle than that: I think people in general are optimists, who don't have the time to think through all the issues. I have a more pessimistic view, based on my understanding that the IPCC chooses to err on the side of caution in its pronouncements, so that reality is likely to be somewhat worse than they care to admit. As for BAU, I predict most nations will continue as they are now, for as long as they can, until various crises overwhelm them. I base that on a combination of two human traits: greed and optimism.
  31. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby @80 writes:
    "[T]he records also show that the leveling off should last for another 20 years."
    The record shows nothing of the sort. I have just finished an analysis of how successfully you can predict future temperatures from trends of a given length. As it happened, for a ten year prediction, a 16 year trend performed significantly worse than simply adding 0.085 C to the current month's temperature. That makes the 16 year trend a very poor predictor of future temperatures. The best prediction from linear trends is obtained by adding 0.046 C (the mean under projection) to the 24 year trend projection. That yields a projection on HadCRUT4 data for 2022 of 0.744 +/- 0.391 C anomaly relative to 1961-1990; and approximately a four in five chance of exceeding the current consecutive 12 month record. Far better than any prediction from recent trends, however, is a prediction from physics. Here for example, is a comparison of the prediction from 16 year trends and that from CO2 forcing alone: As you can see, prediction from trends performs far worse than prediction from physics, even when you only include one (albeit dominant over the long term) forcing. When you include all forcings plus ENSO, as Kevin C does, there is not contest between the predictions made from physics, and those made from trends only: Yet you want to predict a 36 year pause in global warming from a cherry picked 16 year trend in contradiction to the physics? As I said, your claim has no basis.
  32. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    "Intermediate" level article copy contains this passage : quote ...//... A glass greenhouse works primarily by blocking convection, and an atmospheric greenhouse works primarily by blocking thermal radiation, and so the comparison is not exact. ...//... This is blatantly wrong information. (1) ((A glass greenhouse works primarily by blocking convection)) Nonsense. Glass greenhouse works promarily by blocking IR with wavelenght above 3000 nm from leaving. (This is related ti SiO2 glass, other glass-types have different IR-block out limits) It's reflected inward again. This causes partial reabsorption by solid materials, re-emitting IR, reflected again, and again and again in this enclosed space, until losses are getting effective through conduction. (air-glass-air, and I calculate these loss rates 'everyday' through my practise... 99,9% correctly calculable...) Convection originating from air-contact with the solids is heating the air, not the radiation. That is the glass-glasshouse effect. Of coarse the heated air will leave if you open windows, but that if childish talk when explaining physics of the greenhouse effect. The total heat capacity contained in the enclosed air, however, is futile compared to the heat capacity of the solids. That explains the extreme speed of the glass-greenhouse effect. Ventilation of a greenhouse will lower very little of the temperature gain on the solids. The re-re-reflexion mechanism is still working. Only the air temperature, by ventilation, is fooling us we broke down this greenhouse effect. Nonsense, it goes on. We're only evacuating the resulting air convention heat, witch has, as said, a very low heat capacity. (Only water vapour contains a higher heat capacity, due to it's latent heat energy content, not temperature.) I'm really shocked to find such nonsense written down in presumed "intermediate what science says". Because science never said such a thing. Where is that article sourced? A journalist's sensation box ? .... By the way, I see Ned and others, all over this discussion, play with the notion quote ...//... confused about the distinction between "near infrared" and "thermal infrared" wavelengths ...//... While these terminologies are rather useless in science, when describing thermodynamic processes. We quantify only, we don't play with words. (This whole discussion lacks quantification, btw.) Sun radiation boosts a serious amount of direct molecule activating IR-radiation (roughly 1000 - 5000 nm), from which up to 3000 nm is passing glass. At the total 45% IR present in sunlight, at least 30% is contributing to direct molecule vibration activation, "heat". Because this depends to the receiving molecule, the global % contributing directly to heat excitation from the sunlight is not exactly definable. Earth-born IR-radiation peeks at about 10,000 nm, but starting only over 2500 nm. This explains fully the "trap" of reflexion behind Si02 glass. (2) ((an atmospheric greenhouse works primarily by blocking thermal radiation)) Nonsense again. Atmospheric "greenhouse" (fake terminology use, grown over the years.... never use the same terminology for 2 totally different physical systems...) works primarily by absorption of IR-radiation. In some stage of this discussion, I saw the 100% correct statement that all molecules of whatever kind, within a gas mix, in one location, equalise onto the exact same temperature, though the collisions among each other. This means, that if one kind of molecule warms up faster then another kind of molecule, related to a specific IR waverlenght, the resulting accumulated heat is extremely fast redistributed over all at random neighbour molecules. First physical concern is = available heat capacity of the mixed gas. (This capacity always if futile, compared with solids on earth. Only the watervapour ice cristals physics provide something of non-futile proportions) If RE-emitting of radiation (different wavelenght, in most cases ?) is happening, now, the original captator is in minority position within the total gas composition (including suspended ice crystals.) As said, RE-adiation can happen in all kind of different wavelenghts, through this mechanism. I like to see proven measured quantifications within this real-reality complex process, not wet-finger work.) Apart from RE-radiation, chemical driven heat converting processes can take place. On this level , all 5 heat dissipation mechanisms are active at the same time. Convection, conduction, radiation, latent energy conversion, chemical energy conversion. I read zero.dot.zero comments, until now about this complex reality. (From both sides of the discussion table, by the way.) I'm not an active scientist. I have studied, however, thermodynamics, in my accademic years, and I feel horror when anyone is talking gibberish within this domain. I read ridiculous theoretic simplicications of those very complicated thermodynamic processes within the so called "peer revieuwed scientific majority", and I encounter just as much riduculous stupidities from the opposition side. It is sad. Fact is that at least all basic laws of thermodynamics have been proven correct. (-snip-) Anyway, greetings to all, and my wish to get this into real science backed discussion. (I just touched a microscopic detail within the whole topic... ;-) )
    Moderator Response: [DB] Please familiarize yourself with this site's comments policy (link adjacent to the comment box). All caps usage is forbidden (converted to lower case in this instance; future violations will ensure moderation up to and including deletion of the entire comment). Inflammatory tone snipped.
  33. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    I was quite enjoying the comments bunfight on the Youtube version. Rob Honeycutt was answering every silly comment with real science and I was chipping in with my down-home analogies to try to get through to the worst of them the difference between large cyclical variations and small cumulative forcings - waves vs tide on a beach and over-eating averaged over decades vs binge eating/crash diets. Most "anything but CO2" commenters seem incapable of understanding why picking start/finish times on a proper graph can give a totally false impression of the underlying trend. Sometimes, simple analogies like those above can get through.
  34. Doug Hutcheson at 09:31 AM on 13 January 2013
    Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    chriskoz @ 13, it is available from the Firefox extensions searchable when you navigate to Tools/Add-ons. I have had it for ages and it seems pretty reliable, although it relies upon users to add their own ratings when they encounter problems with a particular site. Mods: apologies for the off-topic post, but I don't see a way to email chriskoz privately - is that possible?
    Moderator Response: [DB] Request sent on your behalf.
  35. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    Thanks Rob. And I certainly understand why the comments were blocked. I think the moderation had created a tone that was far better than the other videos on climate change. But I can only imagine it was a nightmare. Chris Mooney is likely correct and it is very difficult to maintain a calm, rational tone on a forum like YouTube, although you do it better than most. The only thing I wondered was if the number of comments might play a role in how highly YouTube recommends videos to those looking at similar stuff. However it looks like the number of views continues to climb.
  36. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby, can you give some evidence for these assertions: "Records of global surface temps and sea surface temps going back to the late 1800s support the current leveling off trend and the records also show that the leveling off should last for another 20 years. I know the current trend can be attributed to noise but is 1/3 of a climate cycle and could continue the next 20 years." Did you get that from the scientific literature or some blog site?
  37. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby, first let me say thanks for returning to the discussion, with what appears to be an open(ed) mind: It does appear that you are trying to get past prior denialist fake talking points. That said, what you still call "leveling off" to me, and statistically, isn't so much a 'leveling' but a tendency toward a less steep slope.' It's not just a semantic point, but rather a more precise science-language-based way of interpreting the data. "Leveling" would be a slope of near zero, and that is not what we're seeing, especially overall, if we examine all sinks of downwelling radiative energy. I think I can fairly speak for most, if not all, climate scientists and those who are deeply and constructively engaged in the field: No one is trying to 'scare' people, per se, but we have reached a point--again, supported by *many* lines of evidence--where we simply do NOT have any more time to wriggle about, till we know 100% of what can be known. Sir Paul Nurse's takedown of Delingpole comes to mind, inasmuch as a consensus of the globes experts have arrived at essentially the same position, that the confidence level of the "A" in GW being real to a factor of 2 sigma. Yes, we need to keep level heads, and we all here are trying; however, at the *very* same moment, we are also deeply troubled by what we see, both in the progression of what we pretty well knew 20 years ago, and the damage that is being caused by the denialati, watts among one of the worst. Everything, and I mean ~everything~ that can be brought to bear upon this issue---solar, wave energy, geothermal, efficiency (conservation witha capital C, foremost), sustainable farming, shipping, and distribution factors, the list is way too long to continue here. the facts we need are here, they are vetted by somewhere north of 14 *thousand* scientists and organizations, and they all point to the same issue. We are running out of time. By all means, keep asking questions, and I can guarantee you will find an answer here at SkS, but also, please consider stopping the spread of FUD, in any way that you *might* be involved in: The stakes of inaction are just getting too high for that. It's that frustration that you may see sometimes bubble to "our" surface. If we don't, the stress the global population WILL experience, dealing with a 2C to 4C rise in surface temps, will go ~waaaay~ beyond any stress you currently sense.
  38. A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    CBDunderkson:
    I expect it to be business as usual... except that you'd park your car over an induction charger in the driveway each night rather than periodically going to something called a 'gas station'. Long term there'd also be vast health and economic benefits, but there are too many variables in how those would play out to predict changes on everyday life.
    That's certainly an appealing vision. But as educated people (I mean the participants in this ongoing discussion), surely we all understand that the environmental disasters we confront -- AGW, biodiversity loss, overuse of fresh water, depauperation of the oceans,and on and on -- are costs of the production of economic goods and services, hitherto held external to the prices we pay for them? If the destruction is to be halted, and human society is to become sustainable, the externalities must be internalized. When that's accomplished, prices for all goods and services will rise, for the luxury and leisure we all (on average, at least) enjoy if not for basic necessities. We've been drawing down the world's natural capital on credit, but now we've got to start paying as we go. I swear I'm not going Lomborg on you all, but I don't believe the world's poor will allow the price of food, clothing and shelter to soar ever farther out of reach. Either we will pay our share and theirs too (willingly or otherwise), or the liquidation of natural capital will continue. In the long term, we can hope that keeping all production costs internal will drive producers to use resources and energy more efficiently; but eventually a limit will be reached, and efficiency imposes costs of its own in any case. Into the foreseeable future, we will consume less, or pay more. I'm sorry, but anyone thinks business as usual can go on is in denial.
  39. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby.... The problem is, increasing levels of CO2 represent increasing radiative forcing. Regardless of the signal you see in the surface temperature data, it's the change in forcing that is the problem. If there is no reduction in radiative forcing, that just means when the surface temperature does return to the long term trend, it's going to do so more abruptly.
  40. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Good points all. Image and video hosting by TinyPic Image and video hosting by TinyPic Image and video hosting by TinyPic I see leveling off trends over the past 10 years with global surface temperatures, sea surface temperatures, and OHC down to 700 m. OHC down to 2000 m has not leveled off and continues to warm so that is where the global warming is. Records of global surface temps and sea surface temps going back to the late 1800s support the current leveling off trend and the records also show that the leveling off should last for another 20 years. I know the current trend can be attributed to noise but is 1/3 of a climate cycle and could continue the next 20 years. I understand that each leveling off period is warmer than the past and could be attributed to increased C02. These are periods that we can bear down on finding alternative energy sources without stressing people.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Fixed image widths.
  41. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Actually there's the core of an interesting question in Smerby's #72. Let me pose it more precisely: Based on our current understanding of the temperature record, what would it take to keep temperatures within 0.05C of the current decadal average for another 15 years? Now the answer should be obvious. We would need either: a) A series of strong volcanic eruptions, or b) A grand solar minimum and a rather greater corresponding change in background than is reflected by the current consensus(1), or c) An increasingly negative ENSO state, or d) The climate to start behaving in a way rather different to the way it has behaved for the last 35 years (simple model) or 130 years (forcing model). A solar minimum doesn't look like it is up to the job, and we don't have a means to forecast volcanoes, so we're stuck with rolling the dice on those or hoping for a drastic change - either for ENSO to start behaving in a way it hasn't before, or for the relationship between temperature and forcing+ENSO to break down. Of course there's no reason it should break in a way that helps us. My turn for an analogy: That seems to me like walking off a building and hoping for a change in the law of gravity before you hit the ground. (1) You can still find a lot of old TSI graphs with very large changes between the Maunder minimum and today. These do not reflect the current consensus.
  42. 2013 SkS Weekly News Roundup #2
    So far, predictions, such as the rate of decline of Arctic ice have been surpassed by reality. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/06/1293011/noaa-climate-change-driving-arctic-into-a-new-state-with-rapid-ice-loss-and-record-permafrost-warming/ The next little surprise Giya may have in store for us is the rate of melting of the Greenland ice sheet. http://mtkass.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/greenland-melting.html
  43. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    To extend Sphaerica's house analogy, the deniers are standing next to the fridge, and every time the door opens and a bit of cool air spills out, they say "see? The house has stopped warming!". In spite of the fact that the fridge is simply moving energy from the air inside the fridge to the air outside the fridge (back coils) - much as ENSO mostly just shifts heat around from one part (the atmosphere) to other parts of the globe (oceans).
  44. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Clyde@31: Well, if the comment was behind a paywall (others have pointed out how to get around that), then the reply is too, so I presume that you had not read the reply, either. Posting a link to a paper/reply that you haven't read, presenting it as rebuttal to another paper/comment that you haven't read strikes me as rather odd behavior. As for wanting the source of the data in the figure, then you should have asked that to begin with instead of wasting people's time with ill-formed questions. Unless, of course, that is your goal.
  45. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    72, smerby, Also note that every bit of carbon we add to the atmosphere is like turning the thermostat up -- but it's broken, so it can't be turned down. If you turn your thermostat up to 100 degrees and then break it, your house won't jump up to 100 degrees in minutes. If it starts to warm and you turn some fans on to make it seem cool, circulating the air better around the house, that may mask the problem but it's not going to change anything in the long run. Your house is going up to 100 degrees and you can't stop it unless you fix the thermostat (and in this case there is no possible way to fix the thermostat -- there is no possible way to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere once it is there). Any supposed "slow down" in global warming isn't because these years of CO2 emissions are somehow less powerful than other years. It just means that other, impermanent factors are obscuring the effects of CO2 -- temporarily. So, if a quiet sun, Chinese aerosols, and an unusual series of La Niña events minimize warming, and then all of those factors go away, or if those factors never existed to begin with, it doesn't matter. The planet will still reach roughly the same temperature in roughly the same amount of time. So this doesn't buy us time. On the contrary, it lets deniers pretend that they can ignore the problem, wasting precious time that is turning a solvable, manageable problem into an "oh-no-oh-my-God-oh-shoot-what-are-we-going-to-do" panic, because people are going to weight until it's too late.
  46. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby, We're not in a flat line. That's a denial fantasy that has been debunked repeatedly. Look here.
  47. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Not feeling like responding to my questions, smerby? Ok. There is no "buying time." Global warming, as has been noted . . . and noted . . . and noted, has not stopped. The ocean heat content trend has shown no hiatus period, and it represents 92-3% of the global energy anomaly. That energy will return to the surface eventually, as it must. The time to do something was always "now." Why should we wait for a few lower-trend years? Develop alternative energy now. Cut energy use now. Buy simple when possible. Buy local when possible. Save the energy for things that have lasting value.
  48. Dikran Marsupial at 04:54 AM on 13 January 2013
    Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    @smerby There is more to global warming that global surface temperatures, there is also the oceans, which have continued to warm. The oceans have a much greater heat capacity than the land, so if the land doesn't warm but the oceans do, then no time has been bought at all. Secondly, trends with cherry picked start dates are pretty meaningless, they are not even statistically significant evidence that surface warming has actually slowed. There is a very good chance you are just seeing noise masking the underlying warming.
  49. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Question here, based on the global surface temperature record since the late 1880s, could the current flat line we are in continue for the next 15-20 years before warming resumes. If so, would that not buy us time to develop affordable alternative energy sources?
  50. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    At first I also thought disabling comments was a poor choice (I can already hear the cries of "SkS silences discussion!"), but when I saw that there was a prominently-displayed link to the comments section here, I changed my mind. In my experiences, talking about climate on YouTube is a nightmare. The character limits mean you end up posting as many as a dozen replies to explain a single idea, and the reply system, while better than it once was, still makes it difficult to follow the conversation. Registering an account here is quick and simple, so that's not a sufficient excuse for anyone who wants to also claim any sort of interest in the discussion. The strategy, while also likely simplifying moderation, might also work to draw in more people like me, who don't have a great degree of knowledge or formal training on climate science. That would be a great thing because SkS, while becoming more and more widely read, still seems to mostly attract commenters who are either quite familiar with the subject or are so invested in their pseudo-scientific ideas (and sometimes conspiracy theories) that they aren't likely to learn much. Maybe a YouTube presence can change the audience for the better.

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