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Comments 49901 to 49950:

  1. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    Rugbyguy... We certainly appreciated your contributions on the Youtube channel comments. We discussed internally how to manage the comments on the channel and, basically, Youtube's system is just not set up for moderation as it's done here at SkS. John would have to give out his password to multiple people and every moderation action would be done as if John were doing it, regardless of who actually did it. It would be a huge land mine of potential conflicts. And on top of that, it just doubles the work of moderation when we have two discussion threads; one here and one on Youtube. Ultimately, we decided, any video we post will also have a blog post here connected to it. All the people on Youtube (skeptics included) are welcome to post their thoughts and observations here. Chris Mooney has this recent article out discussing how the tone of a comments section can act to polarize people when commenting goes negative. Youtube is rife with hyper-negative comments threads, especially on the climate issue. We would like to avoid driving people apart. We would prefer that people come here where we can administer our policies of keeping the discussion on topic and about the science, without personal attacks. My sense is that most of the guys who were commenting on YT will not come here and participate. SkS has proven over and over again that skeptics can participate in discussions, but this is a more challenging atmosphere due to the fact that there are well informed people here and the commenting policies are strictly enforced. Those who are just looking for a fight will do well to keep their commenting limited to YT channels. Those who want to participate in substantive discussions should be more than willing to participate here.
  2. No warming in 16 years
    I can give a partial answer to that. On longer timescales you can't approximate the human contribution as linear, so you need to use a method which takes into account radiative forcing. The simplest approach is to use the 1- or 2-box model method of Rypdal to find the response function which maps radiative forcing onto temperature, plus the El Nino term. If you do that (using the GISS forcings and GISTEMP) on 1880-2010 then you get this:
    While limited to annual data and finishing at 2010, the model shows the same slowdown post 1998, and for the same reason as in the video - the trend in ENSO. In fact the ENSO term is almost identical (marginally larger) to the value used in the video. This very simple model (20-30 lines of R or python) gives a very good fit of temperature from forcing and ENSO without invoking any multidecadal oscillations with an R2 or 92%. On the basis of this analysis at least there is no justification for invoking longer term climate cycles. That would seem to settle the issue, however the case isn't completely closed. The result does depend on the choice of forcings. If instead you use the Potsdam forcings, the ENSO term is the same so the conclusions of the video are unaffected, but there is room for a small contribution from a multidecadal oscillation. I've been looking into the differences in forcings and understand some of the issues, but there are others I need to track down. One other slight complication - there was a slight reduction in the forcing trend in the early '90s, I believe related to the phaseout of CFCs. That should also produce a slight change in temperature trend. But it's probably too small to detect over a 20 year period.
  3. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Nice to see a youtube post. Have thought for a long time that sks should set up a channel (not under John Cooks name) and post a ~monthly vid (would much prefer a quality monthly vid than poorer quality weekly vid). I think alot of my friends are interested in the science of climate change to watch a 10min sks vid every month, but not interested enough to become a regular sks (or realclimate or CSIRO etc) reader
  4. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    The commonly seen denial meme that suggests anything involving models must be wrong/suspect (exemplified perfectly by William @#1) is based on a complete lack of understanding of what a 'model' is, in the scientific sense of the word. Here is a useful, simple primer which is a good starting point for anyone at a basic level of understanding (with a number of useful links at the end).
  5. The Y-Axis of Evil
    Another update on D Boehm/Smokey (Now calling himself D Boehm Stealy) He appears to have "pulled his head in skightly since this was posted on WUWT. perhaps someone over there has had a quiet word to him. Philip Shehan says: January 11, 2013 at 2:30 pm moderator: regarding your comment: Philip Shehan says: January 11, 2013 at 1:15 am (reply -There are numerous moderators. Speculating about motives is not welcome. ~mod) I am aware there are many moderators. I did not assume or suggest anything else. That said, I apoloogise for any offence caused to moderators who I am sure do their job honestly, diligently and impartially. I was critical of the behaviour of only one person, who appears to be a moderator. This person is commenting on the posts of others when those posts have not appeared and that is clearly unnacceptable. The fact that the suppressed comment was addresed to this person,who may have been acting as moderator at the time, gives rise to the suspicion that the supposedly impartial umpire is in fact a player who is rigging the game. That possibility should be alarming to everyone.
  6. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Doug @11, Please provide the location to your addon, I'm very curious... As for 'the ausralian's article, I simply don't have time to waste for reading it. If I had to opine it, I'd violate the coent policy with my choice of words, so no, thanks.
  7. Sapient Fridge at 19:41 PM on 12 January 2013
    Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    In the Australian article Davie Whitehouse of GWPF wrote: "the so-called sceptics who were derided for questioning them were actually on the right track" But back in 2008 the Australian was publishing articles predicting rapid cooling and an ice age. Given current weather events I would suggest that those particular 'sceptic' predictions were most definitely not the right track... The Australian will publish anything as long as it denies AGW.
  8. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    Further digging around leads me to conclude that the 265 degrees I get in tropics using Modtran for an "effective" radiating temperature is about right. Maybe I am starting to get this stuff.
  9. Doug Hutcheson at 18:22 PM on 12 January 2013
    Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Lars Karlsson @ 10, I followed your link to the Australian article, but I have installed a Firefox add-on called 'Web Of Trust', that warns me if I navigate to a site with a poor reputation. Sure enough, I received a warning that the site had been rated 'untrustworthy' by other users. What's this? A mainstream media site untrustworthy? Well, I am surprised. (/sarc) Taking heed of good advice, I did not bother over-riding WOT to read the article. ROTFLMAO. "8-)
  10. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Here is a link to the article in the Australian that doesn't require subscription. They heavily rely on the not very reliable David Whitehouse of the GWPF.
  11. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    Gents, I this is truly an excellent presentation. It's a shame the comments have been disabled on YouTube. Your were certainly engaging most of the big pseudo-skeptics in that milieu. The comments policy was helpful in maintaining reasonably civil discussion. However, I would imagine the number of comments were a bit much to moderate. But once again from someone who visits the site constantly thank you all. It is most helpful.
  12. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    newairly @8, The Australian is a disgrace. Its repeated inaccuracies in reporting, not just on climate change, make it little more than a propaganda rag, IMO. With regard to that particular article, they write: "On one analysis, the forecast confirms what many people have been saying for some time. Global warming effectively stopped 17 years ago and, if the new forecast is accurate, that "pause" will be extended to 20 years." By my analysis, made not by simply eyeballing the chart, but by digitizing it and analyzing it, the new predictions while lower than the previous predictions, predict that 4 out of the next 5 years will break the current HadCRUT3v annual global temperature record. Not only that, but the temperature trend from December 1996 will increase by a factor of five relative to the current trend from that period, said trend being much ballyhooed as "no warming". The only possible way these figures can be treated as extending "the pause in global warming" to twenty years is by pure spin. The deniers are taking us for fools; and in the Australian's "Environment Editor" have found a fool ready to swallow any claptrap they put out without analysis and without thought. Year 1961-1990 1971-2000 1998 0.529 0.411 2013 0.503 0.385 2014 0.544 0.426 2015 0.578 0.46 2016 0.587 0.469 2017 0.541 0.423
  13. Greenhouse effect has been falsified
    This last comment by Sphaerica leads me to check out with you folks my latest delving into Modtran as an educational tool. 1. Used default settings except looking down from 16 km. This means above most convective heating (Forster 1997).I have found that at equator 17 km is about coolest atmospheric layer. 2. My plot of the change in outgoing flux per doubling of CO2 also had a maximum at 16 km, using 1 km increments. 3. At 17 km the narrow, by Doppler, not pressure, broadened, upward going emission peak due to upper atmospheric CO2 had become manifest in the saturation region of the bending mode absorption. So another reason to stop at 16 km. Default CO2 is 375 ppm. No relative humidity. 4. Using a digitizing program I measured the areas under the 260 K black body peak AND the computed absorption spectrum including the large bending mode dip and the smaller ozone, H2O contributions. I use the 260 K curve to correct the real curve for issues in correctly digitizing the high and low wave number limits. Both curves integrate to a bit under the Stefan Boltzman formula if we assume 260 K but the real curve is definitely somewhat greater in equivalent temperature than 260 K I am using as a reference. I don't think the real curve corresponds to over 265 K but I cannot take the time to get really good statistics, and this is digitizing by eyeball. 5. Conclusion.....Yes indeedy, the earth looks - from the Modtran vantage point of 16 km - like a 260 plus something K black body in the tropics. Not unreasonable that integrated over the globe one might thusly get 255 K? I am interested in developing a lab exercise thereby. Comments?
  14. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    The Australian newspaper Australian article today has a story which, in part, claims that global warming stopped 17 years ago and this new analysis extends that to at least 20 years. This is despite also quoting from the Met Office response!
  15. Doug Hutcheson at 11:33 AM on 12 January 2013
    A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    CBDunkerson @ 23, I agree that stopping use of FF for electricity generation and transport would see the increase in atmospheric CO2 slowed and, perhaps, it would start to reduce. I am not refuting your claim that CO2 would start decreasing: I just don't have the figures at my fingertips, so I will have to do more research to identify whether turning off the pumps would see CO2 levels go into reverse. According to the EIA
    During the past 20 years, about three-quarters of human-made carbon dioxide emissions were from burning fossil fuels.
    Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, resulting from petroleum and natural gas, represent 82 percent of total U.S. human-made greenhouse gas emissions
    So, 75% of our emissions are from fossil fuels and (taking the US figure as representative of the world as a whole, which may be wildly incorrect) 82% of that 75% is from burning FF for energy. That means 61.5% of our total emissions are from energy use. If we could stop burning FF for energy, worldwide, today, then my inexpert understanding is that atmospheric CO2 concentrations should start a (slow) decline and the total carbon in the atmosphere may remain below the 2°C threshold. As I understand it, the oceans and other vectors of sequestration are absorbing about half our emissions (making the oceans more acidic in the process). If this is correct, it follows that cutting worldwide emissions in half and maintaining that new level constantly, would see atmospheric CO2 levels remaining at their current level. If we cut by the 61.5% I mentioned above and maintain that new level, then I expect CO2 levels would start to decrease. I do not know whether this decrease would be negated by the oceans outgassing CO2 as the partial pressure in the atmosphere changed. My point is that the key metric is the amount of CO2e in the atmosphere. In order to keep this metric within the bounds of a 2°C rise in GST, while continuing to give Annex 2 nations the emissions we have agreed to, Annex 1 nations would have to decarbonise totally (not by just 61.5%), crippling the global economy. All the above is back-of-an-envelope calculation and I am sure I am not accurate with the figures. I certainly do not mean to refute your claim and sincerely hope you are right. Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the 'real world' is ready to decarbonise by the amounts I have suggested and the Annex 2 nations are certainly not going to hold their emissions static at today's levels, so I think we have a snowball in hell's chance of staying below 2°C, which Kevin Anderson is describing as potentially very dangerous. I fully agree with your conclusion that "There is still time to limit the damage using realistic solutions". We have the means to address the problem, but we don't have the political will to do what needs to be done.
  16. Temperatures Continue Up the Escalator
    Hi Esop in # 18 above....Could you steer me toward the Fred Singer "Unstoppable Warming Every 1500 Years" thing? I will be giving a presentation a few months from now at a place where they will probably throw that one by Singer at me as a question.
  17. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    That is one great teaching video! BTW if you look at my post 29 in the thread "IPCC Temperature Projections Have Been Exceptionally Accurate" there is a plot of the averaged ten data sets in our SKS trend feature, but now temp anomaly plotted against log base two (conc/conc 1850). I think present thread is an appropriate place to mention that plot. Dead fit to straight line with probability no correlation abscissa and ordinate less than one in 10,000.
    Moderator Response: TC: Edited to add image.
  18. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Aircraft design relies upon computer models. Jetting off somewhere, or just feeling lucky?
  19. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    SRJ, in that case there is clearly only one 'logical' conclusion... Global warming is intermittent... and caused by volcanoes. :]
  20. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    DSL, precisely. We humans use different kinds of models all the time (usually informal ones). Without models, one could neither predict the future nor understand the past. All that would remain is instinct. And although our models usually are incomplete and often wrong in one way or another, thinking with models is a lot better than not thinking at all.
  21. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Fortunately we're not dependent on models. We've got past climate. This Knutti and Hegerl graphic from 2008 is getting dated, there's been so much work on this in the past 5 years which it doesn't cover.
  22. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    JoeT: Good question. The only way I've tested that is in a more recent calculation where I allow the trend post 1997 to be different to the trend pre 1997. You do get a very small difference, but it's less than 1 σ and so indistinguishable from noise. I'm not very well read on aerosol measurements, but I think Kaufmann worked his out on the basis of fuel usage. The issues is complicated by the fact that aerosols are not well mixed through the atmosphere and have different effects depending on where they are.
  23. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    I mean, try walking across the street without a model of how traffic moves on a street. The intuitive model will likely be accurate enough to get a person across the street without incident, though inaccuracies will occur from time to time (hopefully not fatal). Using no model . . . well, it keeps the EMTs busy anyway.
  24. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    This is speculation on my part, but I would imagine that modeling Arctic sea ice loss is an entirely different animal from surface temps. With surface temps you can at least do hindcasting to test the models. I image that hindcasting, or any other testing methods, would not be as accurate for sea ice loss, if possible at all.
  25. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    Beats an uneducated guess or just stumbling about, living for the passing moment. What gets me is when people assume that model projections are actually predictions, as if scientists aren't testing the range of possibilities using the most likely range for each of the many variables.
  26. Met Office decadal forecasting explained: the reality
    I love this dependence we have on models. Here, for instance, is a summary of some dozen models predicting ice extent in the Arctic compared with observations. 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/ I wonder if these met office models are any more reliable. You can only model what you know. Not what you haven't yet discovered.
  27. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Agreed, Sphaerica, and what else is telling? Ever since smerby has been--educated--this is what we've heard . All in all, facts will win the day, but I fear it truly will be too late to stop the worst of what's to come.
  28. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    I think what is more telling is how people who really don't understand (see here) latch onto the "no warming since" meme and repeat it. They're all so very eager for it to not be a problem, rather than (God forbid) own up to it, address it, make sacrifices, and fix it. If these people had been around in [insert time of historical crisis here] we'd all be [insert bad outcome here from ignoring what can now be seen in hindsight to have been very, very bad].
  29. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    "Has anyone else noticed how smoothly the chants of "Global Warming is not Happening!" have been replaced by: "Global Warming was Happening, even when we said it wasn't, but now it isn't any more!" I sure have: it's been nearly instantaneous in the denialoshere, and I take that as good news. As reality and observable data intervene in their narrative, the fake "skeptics" are back-peddling like a Mississippi paddle boat to avoid a cataract. Back when there *was* water in the Mississippi....;(
  30. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Has anyone else noticed how smoothly the chants of "Global Warming is not Happening!" have been replaced by: "Global Warming was Happening, even when we said it wasn't, but now it isn't any more!".
  31. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby - "Facts" without context are perhaps better termed "Factoids" - a piece of information rather smaller than a fact, as in something (like 10 year trends) presented without sufficient background to correctly interpret. dana1981 - Quite right about the link; I had only looked at what was linked through the figure itself, which is the full version of the graph. Although it's still quite worthwhile to point folks to Google Scholar.
  32. 16  ^  more years of global warming
    Allow me to pile on with the compliments -- this is an incredibly effective and extremely well-presented video. Congratulations on an outstanding job. I have a question as well -- has there been any attempt to include in the model the role of increased emission of sulfate aerosols due to the huge increase in coal burning plants in China and the rest of the world? Anything in the published literature? Satellite measurements of increased solar relection for example? Thanks.
  33. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    The controversy over the Met Office short-term climate forecasts is also reviewed and analyzed in two well-written articles posted on The Carbon Brief. They both provide insights not included in Dana’s excellent OP. Why the Met Office’s revised forecast still doesn’t show global warming has stopped by Roz Pidcock, The Carbon Brief, Jam 9, 2013 That Met Office media controversy in context by Ros Donald, The Carbon Brief, Jan 10, 2013
  34. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Clyde @31 and KR @59 - the link to Nuccitelli et al. (2012) in the Figure 3 caption is the free version. As I said, our OHC data comes from Levitus, which is NOAA. smerby - "facts" without context are useless, particularly in mainstream media articles where the general public does not have the expertise in the subject in question to interpret what those facts mean without the necessary context. Articles that simply say "no surface warming trend in 10 years" lack the context given in this post - for example that such 10-year periods are expected by climate models, that the planet would have cooled over those 10 years if not for the human GHG-caused warming, that 10 years is too short for a statistically significant trend, etc. etc.
  35. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Thanks again. Yes, you are right, both Pinatubo and ENSO play a part in the 90's trend. Here's the 2-box+enso model output: Red is the model, blue is GISTEMP. Data runs to the end of 2010. I use this as a crude metric to determine what is unexplained in terms of climate. As you can see the model also shows the recent flattening, which comes from the ENSO term. The 40's deviations are partly explained by the SST adjustments which GISTEMP doesn't have. The late 30's deviation is still a mystery. The deviation right at the beginning is an equilibriation artefact.
  36. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    # 57 KevinC Here is the same plot for HADCRUT4 I think that the significant 10 years trends in the nineties are related to the super El Nino of 1998 rather than the Pinatubo. This plot, as well the one for HADCRUT3, shows that 10 year trend rarely are statistical significant.
  37. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Oops...actually my comment #58 refers to the previous post by Kevin C, but really, the comment still stands as Kevin's animation does nicely address the 10-years comments raised here.
  38. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Clyde - I would recommend as a resource Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), a search engine for papers, patents, etc. Searching there for "nuccitelli et al 2012" gives a link to an open PDF, which is not surprisingly found here. There are quite often openly accessible copies of otherwise paywalled or out of print papers available from the authors or other sources; checking "all versions" for a paper is often worthwhile. Read it, look at the references and sources for the data. Perhaps then your comments will be more relevant to the contents of the paper and the figures you have questioned.
  39. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Those arguing that a 10-year trend in surface temperature means anything, especially without considering the other influences on surface temperature from volcanic aerosols, the solar cycle, and El Nino/La Nina events, have completely missed the point of this post. Just as Kevin's animation shows that the warming trend over the past 16 years is the same as the previous 16 years after the other influences are removed, that conclusion also holds for the past 10 years. Readers should also be aware that it is a common denier tactic to cherry-pick time periods that are too short to say anything statistically meaningful about global warming, especially when the other short-term influences on climate are not considered. That tactic is nicely illustrated by The Escalator.
  40. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Nice work SRJ. I'm matching that up against the 2-box model output: 92-02 is Pinatubo of course. 74-84 is a massive ENSO swing, so that's not unprecedented either. 64-74 is Mt Agung 55-65 is less well captured in the model but has an ENSO component. The two big swings around 1940 are interesting and probably related to the SST adjustments. The down swing is certainly the unadjusted transition from engine room temperature measurements to buckets in 1945, and should be corrected in HadCRUT4. The upswing is unaccounted for, although I have unpublished evidence (John Kennedy at Hadley has seen it) that suggests the bucket correction may be underestimated by about 1/3, which if correct would explain part of it. However even if I am right there is certainly a residual 1935-45 temperature anomaly which is not captured by any model I have seen.
  41. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    # 49 Yes it is possible to find 10 years periods in the temperature record with statistical significant trends. In the plot (click here for large version) below I show all 10 years (120 months) trends for the period 1900-2012 for HadCrut3. The confidence (95%) region is indicated as a bluish shaded area*. When this band is not including the zero line, the trend is statiscally significant. *) Technical note: I have corrected for autocorrelation by assuming it to be constant over the period using a correction factor nu = 3.4 for all trends. I have not corrected for multiple comparisons.
  42. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Anyone coming in here and trying to argue about global warming on the basis of the surface temperature record has two "just the facts" to contend with. First is, as shown in Figure 2 and 3 of the OP: most (97-98%) of the action in global warming is not in surface temperatures. Second is, as noted by tobyjoyce, the ongoing radiative imabalance at top-of-atmosphere, such that energy out < energy in. Unless these are accounted for, anyone trying to claim "global warming has stopped" or has "stalled", or there's a "pause", or anything along that line has no case whatsoever.
  43. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    CBDunkerson, BernardJ: Actually you can find such periods, for example by exploiting volcanoes. 1992-2002 using the large Pinatubo cooling at the start of the period is an example. There's another one 1974-1984, but they're pretty rare and usually depend on some known phenomena. Drawing conclusions from trends which include known uncorrected short term variations remains a meaningless exercise. Of course, you would expect 1 in 20 (40) to be significant by chance, so the problem with Smerby's argument stands even if we ignore the short term influences. This cartoon is a barometer of whether this point has been understood: Significant Finally, testing for statistical significance in the trend is the wrong test - this is an elementary statistical fallacy called the fallacy of null hypothesis rejection. You can't falsify 'ongoing warming' by checking for a trend significantly different from zero. All you can do is falsify 'no warming', which is exactly the opposite of the test Smerby wants to perform. To falsify 'ongoing warming' you have to check for a significant deviation from some predicted trend, having removed confounding factors.
    Moderator Response: [RH] Tweaked image width (yes, I'm being anal about the page formatting again).
  44. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby@23, 25,30, and 33: This strident assertion that all you want is "the indisputable facts" has been, extremely patiently I might add, explained again and again, to you and others. What you seem to want is a simple, sound-bite-y chunk of simplistic reporting: It's that type of simplistic reporting by the MSM that has led to such confusion and tripe, being passed along as "facts." Science doesn't work that way, and no amount of desperate hand-waving will change that. The fact is, indisputably and by numerous metrics (lines of evidence), global warming *overall* has NOT stopped, and that global ~surface~ warming has only slowed down to a statistically-insignificant margin, not "stopped." Warming on the globe has not, repeat, not stopped, and that is the point of many of your respondents. We'd ~all~ like this to be simple and I guarantee you, we earth scientists would love *nothing* better than the entire AGW theory to be disproven; at this point, there are no data that shows that has happened. Insisting you want a simple, factual, and at the same time, *wrong* conclusion shouted from the rooftops isn't going to help the critical mission, that being to spread awareness that this IS an issue we ~must~ address, NOW.
  45. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    To add to CB's point, lillybutter, the surface temp record technically cannot falsify the theory of anthropogenic global warming. It can only cast doubt on the model projections. In order to falsify the theory of AGW, one would have to show that the cooling efficiency of the Earth is not affected by an increase or decrease of one of a number of atmospheric gases (H2O, CO2, CH4, etc.). That's not even remotely in question. With a very high level of confidence we can say that, no matter what the surface temp analysis says, it will be warmer with 300ppm CO2 than it will be with 100ppm CO2. What I'd like to see is an analysis of what global temp would be without the rise in CO2 and CH4. Oh, and the surface temp--esp. not just HadCRU4--is not the climate system, so rephrase the question to include OHC and global ice mass loss.
  46. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    smerby, to do so would be akin to reporting, in a mainstream news source, that "Solar Radiation Has Begun to Rise Sharply!" and not telling them that it's part of the 11-year solar cycle. Despite the decline in journalistic quality and ethics, people still view mainstream news sources as somewhat reliable. That means they have tremendous power to shape opinion, and opinion is often (but not always) the basis for action. If someone wants to know what the ten-year trend is, the information is readily available. Why does it need to presented in the mainstream news? It's not like the mainstream news is reporting the ten-year trend when it's positive. Why do you want them to report it when it's negative? The Met Office didn't even report the 15-year trend; Rose and Delingpole had to lie (that is fact, moderators) and make it appear that they did. So why do it? What's the purpose? You know the opinion of science: "climate is 30+ years." What, then, would be the reason for doing it--as I've asked you eighteen times now. I've also asked you what it means to you. I have this image of you standing with your arms folded and a petulant look on your face, saying, "I just want it that way!"
  47. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    CBDunkerson at #49. Frustratingly I've left the USB with my file containing the data at work, and I'm not about to redo the whole exercise, but from a causal perusal of my quick graph above I'd say that for the GISTemp data the answer is "No". If any year was going to emerge with an answer to the contrary I'm pretty sure that it would occur within the range of that graph. If a more accurate analysis confirms this, then Smerby will always be on statistical quicksand with his "we are now in a period where global surface temperatures have not warmed for the past 10 years", as we are always in a period where global surface temperatures have not warmed at the 95% confidence level for at least the past 10 years. The claim that there has been no recent warming is nothing more than a trick to close the curtains sufficiently that the signal is hidden in the noise.
  48. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    Are there any years in the entire global temp anomaly record (1880 - 2012) where it would not be true to say, 'There has been no statistically significant warming for the past 10 years.'? Seriously, it seems like a 'true', but almost completely meaningless statement. 'The grass in my yard has shown no statistically significant growth in the last 10 seconds. Clearly grass no longer grows!' How can denialbots get themselves worked up over such idiotic tripe?
  49. A Brief Note on the Latest Release of Draft IPCC Documents
    Doug, you are 'refuting' my claim that atmospheric CO2 levels would begin decreasing if we stopped using fossil fuels for electricity generation and automobiles with a citation of little wiggle room for some nations in the Kyoto protocol in order to avoid 2C warming... how is it not obvious that the two things are completely different? First, ceasing use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and automobiles worldwide would be a vastly greater reduction in emissions than anything called for by the Kyoto protocol. Second, I made no claim of avoiding 2C warming. Frankly, I believe that ship has sailed. I only said that getting fossil fuels out of electricity generation and cars would be sufficient for the atmospheric CO2 level to stop increasing and (very slowly) start to recover towards the previous natural level. Basically, at this point it seems inevitable that we are going to hit +2C. The only question is how far above that we are going to go and for how long. There is still time to limit the damage using realistic (i.e. not 'we must implement martial law, cease all use of technology, and return to a global agrarian society') solutions.
  50. Resolving Confusion Over the Met Office Statement and Continued Global Warming
    The MET Office predicted temperatures in 2017 in the range 0.0.28 to 0.59 C above the average. Should 2017 have a strong El Nino like 1998 then the expected temperature is going to be at the top of the range; 0.59 C. The possibility of events like El Nino are why they provide a range. The top of the 2017 range is 0.19 C above the 1998 temperature. No one could possibly interpret that as a lack of surface warming.

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