Here is a somewhat humorous & admittedly self-serving observation: Simple models that prove their worth in the long run can graduate from naïve to elegant over time.
Rob Quayle
[email protected]
March 17, 2013
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the kind words! I’m going to send you a full reply offline. When you say you couldn’t log in, do you mean to comment? The buttons below are variously logins for Facebook, Twitter and WordPress. If you have profiles on any of those sites, you can use them. I’d be interested to know what you couldn’t login for if it wasn’t that.
I’m going to send you an email now.
Andy
]]>BTW, you might be interested in checking out a brand new website, http://www.ClimateBites.org (June 2011), that has similar goals — improving climate communication — but takes a different approach. The fledgling site includes a rated “climate metaphors/soundbites” collection, plus various other tools for communicators. A colleague and I created http://www.ClimateBites.org to help empower those who speak or write for general audiences.
With your permission, we may at some point want to use some of your graphs for the ClimateBites’ “Slide & Graphics library” (under construction), with proper credit and links back to your site, of course.
One glitch: I wanted to login couldn’t figure out where to register, so I can log in…
Tom Smerling
]]>Hi Kevin,
Good point. I’ll put links to the blog entries related to the above explanations in now. That will show which scientists have agreed closely. Apologies for my prior lack of fastidiousness. Otherwise, you’ll find sources linked to throughout this blog.
On the “majority of scientists” that’s in my first attempt at an explanation, which I’ve refined by talking to scientists this year. I’ve picked them on the basis of the highest profile scientific research published each week, and none of them have contradicted my initial statement directly. I’ve also tried to get comments from scientists who might contradict it, even though they haven’t published any high profile climate research that I’ve seen, but they did not want to participate.
But if you want a scientific paper showing that the majority of scientists credit humanity’s role in climate change, there’s one covered in this entry:
I should point out that I’m not a climate scientist: I’m a science journalist. I’ve enlisted scientists’ help to try and explain climate change simply in the way described above. So I don’t have a comprehensive explanation for all elements of climate science. For elements I don’t cover, I would recommend trying sources like the IPCC: http://www.ipcc.ch/
The NOAA:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
The UK Met Office:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/
Skeptical Science in my blogroll (on the left panel, below the calendar) also tries to tackle many climate arguments, although it’s clearly a strong proponent of the idea that humans are causing global warming.
However, according to Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, yes warming IS outside natural variability seen pre-industrialisation. Although I don’t think I’ve covered the “logarithmic effect of CO2 concentrations” much I think perhaps Trenberth also alludes to that.
The “reflected solar radiation” comes from a particularly simple explanation provided by Walter Immerzeel:
As another reader pointed out in a comment on that post, this is outgoing long-wave radiation. However, I would generally prefer to use the words “energy” or “heat” in a simple explanation. Each explanation that I’ve received from scientists has its strengths and weaknesses, which is why I’m enlisting readers to vote for what they think is the best in the polls shown on the top right of the page. Have you voted for yours?
One final comment, as you note climate change is a complex issue. But I do try and keep it simple, and from that viewpoint I would focus your questions on these few areas. Does human burning of fossil fuels produce CO2? Has the amount of fossil fuel humans burn increased? Has the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere gone up? Is CO2 a greenhouse gas that traps heat? The answer to all these questions is yes. That is the crux of the climate change situation to me, and I’m afraid that anything else is a bit of a distraction.
Thanks for your comment – it’s helped me refine my thinking.
Andy
-“The majority of scientists predict that this will have a major impact on our climate.” — what majority, define please?
-“CO2 traps outgoing radiation and leads to a warming of the atmosphere.” –perhaps you could mention the logarithmic effect of CO2 concentrations?
-“that global temperatures have increased by about 0.8°C” — is this rise out of line with any previous warming or cooling trend previous to industrialization?
-“which traps reflected solar radiation.” — what kinds of radiation?
-“because the scientists have agreed so closely” … –which scientists?
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