I’ve decided that I’m just going to ask people stupid R questions. Today’s stupid questions will relate to making graphs pretty.
As some of you know, yesterday, I posted figures generated using a script that cannibalized Mr. Kelly O’Day’s handy script for plotting NinoSST’s.
I wanted to discuss a question about the persistence of La Nina, and thought I re-use the script. But it occurred to me that the visually challenged (i.e. me) might get head aches trying to squint to read the text in graphs like this one:
Yes. We can all click to embiggen. Oh, I know lots of people think small font looks prettier and somehow ‘more scientific’. But after embiggening, I still have to squint. Plus, when I embiggen, I find it difficult to read the text while also inspecting the figure. So, even if “lots of people” like small “elegant”, “scientific” looking fonts, I don’t.
The desire for larger fonts lead me to entering things like ?plot — which didn’t help much– and googling things like “how to change font size in R” etc. In the process, I discovered some some commands, that let me make changes– but I am dissatisfied with the plot. Since I’m sure at least one of you knows a zillion different ways to control graphs in R, I’ve decided to just show my new plot and ask questions.
Here’s the new plot:
As you can see,
- I increased the font size for the title and labels. This was accomplished by setting the cex.main and cex.lab to larger values than Kelley selected. I modified
herhis plotting function, passed a default value of “cex1”, and then set the title and labels to 110% that size:
plot(nino_34$yr_frac, nino_34$ssta, type = “n”, axes=F, ann=T, main=title, xlab = x_lab, ylab = y_lab, cex.main=1.10*cex1, cex.lab=1.10*cex1Note that setting “axes=F” cased the default axes to vanish. I would prefer to keep the default axes which looked nice but just control the itty-bitty default font. But the tutorial pages I found didn’t do that. They made them vanish and then added them later.
Note: Solved by guessing… I added cex.axis=cex1 to the plot() command. D’oh. (I wonder why the tutorials did it a different way. Oh well…)
- Despite asking for a label on the x-axis using “plot”, there no label on the “X” axis. None appeared when I wrote the plot command including xlab = “Year”. So clearly, something is interfering with these showing up. Anyone have a tip?
- I managed to create custom axes. However, my method is clunky and unsatisfactory. There must be a better way. I used axis(). When I used the default tick marks, the graph looked like s*it. So, I specified tick marks. I picked some. The graph looked like s*it. I fiddled until the graph didn’t look too wretched. The final fiddling involved these two commands:
axis(2, at=yTicks,las=1, cex.axis=cex1, outer=F, line=lineY) # Add Y lables.
axis(1, at=xTicks,las=1, cex.axis=cex1, outer=F,line=lineX) # Add X lables.
The xTick and yTicks are the x and y tick marks shown. LineY happens to shift the axis up. LineX happens to not shift at all. Note that the two axis don’t meet, that’s suboptimal, but trust me, the defaults were uglier. - I moved the text around. This was accomplished by tweaking the positions in “mtext”, positioning things relative to various axes:
mtext(“Lucia Liljegren – http://rankexploits.com/musings”, side =1,line =1, adj = 0, cex = cex1, outer=TRUE)
mtext(format(Sys.time(), “%m/%d/ %Y”), side =1, line =1, adj = 1, cex = cex1, outer=TRUE)
mtext(source_note, side =1,line=lineSource,adj=0.07, cex=cex1, outer=F).
I’m happy with this– but if there is a better way, let me know. - I made the text larger:
mtext(“Lucia Liljegren – http://rankexploits.com/musings”, side =1,line =1, adj = 0, cex = cex1, outer=TRUE)
mtext(format(Sys.time(), “%m/%d/ %Y”), side =1, line =1, adj = 1, cex = cex1, outer=TRUE)
mtext(source_note, side =1,line=lineSource,adj=0.07, cex = cex1, outer=F)I’m happy with this– but if there is a better way, let me know.
- Update: Actually, I’ve concluded I’m even less happy with the graph than I thought. I had manually adjusted the size of the window. The graph above looks not so horrible– but when I closed the window and reran– wow! Horrible. Any tips on how to make graphs look good, while also not having ittsie-bitsie fonts would be welcome.
Any tips on how to make this less ugly? Specifically, I’d like the axes to touch each other, and I’d like to avoid having to do anything remotely complicated when dealing with tick marks. It’s nice to have all this control, but clearly, I don’t want to manually adjust things for every graph I make. It seems to me there must be some easier way. But googling is coming up with tutorials that just don’t solve my particular issues in a clean way.
If you want to look at the ugly script, it’s here: LuciasNino34GraphingRScript
Lucia,
I have not delved that deeply into it, but I have observed (in line with your last paragraph) that when you manually adjust the size of the window, the plot itself is reduced but the text size does not change. So one possible way is just to reduce the size of the window until you get the proportions (of text to graph) right, and then save the figure at that size.
Furthermore, the figure, on Macs at least, is saved as a PDF, which means you can always open it with a PDF viewer and blow it up to any size, and you will be able to see all the details, since it is a vector graphic.
To actually save again the figure at the larger size, always on a Mac, open it using Preview, choose “Save As…”, choose the .png format, and then pick any resolution you like. On my computer, 150 pixels/inch is the default, so 300 pixels per inch gives me 2x magnification.
Thanks Julio–
I’ve noticed the same thing. Mostly.
I just discovered the quartz() command. This creates a new window the size I want. For example:
quartz(width=8, height=5, pointsize=8)
This has helped with the issue of c*appy graphics. (The default window size almost never looks good — at least not if you want to add descriptive titles, and don’t want text to vanish off the edges.)
I’m not trying to figure out if I can add larger margins around the image. That would give me the flexibility to place informative source and blog citations in nice places. It’s not something people do for papers, but it’s a nice thing to do on blogs where images get copied linked and circulated.
Re: lucia (Comment#64898) January 6th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Ah, more useful info! I need to dig into your script one of these days and see what sense I can make of it. I’m just feeling somewhat reluctant to spend too much time learning R right now. I have a lot of tools that I use routinely that work well for me, and so I keep asking myself if it’s worth the effort to learn a new one that may just make a few tasks a bit easier…
I found the quartz() command– to control the window, guessed the solution to changing fonts inside the plot() command, and changed values for “line”, and got this:
But, now I want to figure out how to leave more white space below the graph so I can put the “Data Source” text outside the plot without being forced to use tiny-tiny text.
Julio–
I totally understand. I stuck with EXCEL, but there are now things that are just too inefficient in EXCEL. So, I’ve been doing other things– not illustrated at the blog– in R. If I could still do the other things in EXCEL, I would have zero motivation to learn R. I don’t care how much anyone says “share the code”, “do it in R” blah, blah. EXCEL can be shared. So, can anything.
My scripts are skanky. I leave breadcrumbs in them. The bits i write tend to have 1 comment for every 2 lines. Sometimes, they have questions like “Why did I lose the X label”? I’m not cleaning this up when uploading to the blog. Whatever I used, that’s what’s there! People who know R can laugh, but I don’t care.
Ok… I discovered how to add extra white space below the graph:
par(oma=c(4,0,0,0))
# oma A vector of the form c(bottom, left, top, right) giving the size of the outer margins in lines of text.
Putting this before the plot() command added 4 extra lines of white space below the graph. After that, I could fiddle and place the “Data Source”, blog citation and date in the corners. 🙂
Lucia,
My source code for laboratory instrument control is heavily commented… including questions and notes to myself, explanations of work-arounds, and a few rather rude comments about specific customers who complained about one software function or another. I like lots of comments!
What would the 10 year trailing average of Nino 3.4 look like? Seems to me this might well tell us something about global warming.
Lucia,
I remember Chad commenting about the difficultly of making nice looking graphs as well. The documentation for R must be non-existent.
SteveF–
If often seems to me that ‘tutorial’ examples on the web were written and then stripped of most comments. Kelly is pretty good, but I just edited the top line by adding comments.
It used to look like this:
As comments in online R go, Kelly’s seems to be *heavily commented*! (In fact,
hershis look like some of the best on the web.)I changed it to this
I suspect one reason for few comments in some online tutorials is that they go along with a lecture. So, the lecturer is running R in class, and talking at the same time. The students can take notes. In this situation, lecturers may have discovered too many comments confuse the students who are trying to find the actual CODE on the screen during class.
It exists. It’s just structured like a wild goose chase. There are lots of defaults which make it easy to create a decent looking graph quickly. But then, when you want to start adding long titles, controlling the lay out etc.
So you type ?plot at the screen. There is a nice window explaining lots of stuff– mostly the default.
To learn more, you need to understand the significance of
You notice “par” is highlighted. Click that. Now you find a huge number of things you can control. Huge. So huge you grow old reading the list. But even ‘par’ is not enough.
Without examples sort of similar to what I want to do, I have a pretty difficult time finding helpful stuff. Sometimes, it’s because it’s so difficult to figure out decent words to use in a google search.
But I think now that I know what Kelly was doing in that first line, I can make graphs that are less uglifico. Discovering the quartz() command helped too.
Lucia
I’m really glad to see you using R. I will help you any way I can as long as you call me Mr. Kelly O’Day.
I’ve put together a simple – clean R script of your Nino34 plot at this link.
I’ve tried to answer your questions by giving you an annotated script.
Feel free to send me any R questions at
koday**at**processtrends**dot**com
You may want to check out my LearnR Toolkit .
Kelly
Btw, that’s Mr!
opps! Sorry Kelly. That’s the trouble with unisex names! Let me go change that.
Lucia,
The 2:04 pm graph looks very good. I’d like to see the full script for that one! 🙂
Steve–there is documentation, but it still feels a lot like a “do it yourself” project…
Lucia, Julio,
After seeing Lucia’s graphic, I was inspired to fool around a little (sorry not in R, Excel). Take a look: http://i53.tinypic.com/2ntikw0.jpg
This is something I did not expect.
D Kelly O’Day:
Got it, we’re to not call you “Late for Dinner.”
SteveF,
Hmmm… I think maybe we need to look at a wind based correlation. Otherwise, maybe all it means is a sub-set of temperature happens to be correlated with a subset.
I’m under the impression that Bob Tisdale discusses taking the trend out of some index. That could be very important for SST which, after all, has the same overall rising trend as the global temperature.
Re: SteveF (Jan 6 14:58),
Actually it makes a lot of sense. If the index is the first derivative of the temperature, which seems logical to me, then any constant trend becomes a constant and goes away when the graph is centered. It also means that any ‘explanation’ of temperature using the index is circular. It’s really not much different than constructing a 65 year moving average to eliminate the effect of the AMO.
Re: SteveF (Comment#64913)
You beat me to it! I was trying to figure out how to do it in R (I almost got it too).
Anyway, your figure actually was my understanding of something Bob Tisdale posted here several months ago: that basically this is the way the planet warms:
dT/dt = a*(some ENSO index)
for some constant a.
And another play on being called late from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Mr O’Day minor nit. I think you needed a # on line 26
Re: DeWitt Payne (Comment#64916)
I do not think this is a trivial result at all. Think about it. To get the global average temperature anomaly you need to combine measurements from thousands of weather stations all around the world. Now it turns out that you can get the same result, to pretty much the same accuracy, over a period of 140 years (!), just by adding up the anomalies over a region of the Pacific.
I can sort of see what you say (the El Niño index is probably an anomaly to begin with, some kind of baseline is probably subtracted in order to compute it, and this may be a moving baseline, possibly even the global temperature anomaly to begin with), but I do not see how it becomes a first derivative, nor how one can get a global result so accurately from a local phenomenon. I really think it’s remarkable.
julio
Given how noisy global temperature is, I also find it remarkable that a measurement at a key point captures so much of the variability.
We do know that SST in that particular region of the world helps forecast global temperature, and local temperature elsewhere. That’s useful even if it doesn’t “explain” the global effect.
Re: SteveF (Jan 6 14:58),
Hmmm, I wonder if the Lake Korttajarvi varved sediment dataset can be used to hindcast the El Nino record of the past 2,000 years…
🙂
Re: lucia (Jan 6 16:13),
But that’s precisely it. It isn’t noise, it’s signal. It’s exactly what you would expect from a deterministic chaotic system, variation at all time scales and none of it stochastic. Unpredictable, yes, random, no. It would be surprising to me if there weren’t a good correlation between the various SST indices and global temperature.
Re: AMac (Jan 6 16:37),
I realize you had your tongue planted firmly in your cheek, but… Maybe not Lake Korttajarvi, but there’s a sediment record in Laguna Pallcacocha in southern Ecuador that seems to be correlated to ENSO. See abstract.
DeWitt:
I agree with this:
as well as with your characterization of it as signal as opposite to noise. I think Steve’s figure shows that beautifully.
I remain baffled by three things:
* the local to global thing
* the first derivative thing
* the amazing long-term accuracy of the reconstruction. Consider that, at every stage (that is every year for 100+ years), you add the year’s index to the previous running sum. If the index were not very precisely equal to the first derivative, if every year it had a bit of extra random “noise,” after 100+ years that random noise would add up to a (possibly substantial) random walk, and you could have ended up very far away from the “true” global temperature.
Is it possible to get a true climate scientist interested in this?
Re: julio (Jan 6 16:52),
Only if the noise weren’t stationary, AR(1) with a coefficient of 1 or I(1) for example. Note that the integral of the ENSO index in the graph has been scaled and offset. Any constant systematic error will end up in the scaling factor or the offset and stationary noise will average to zero.
Julio:
“I can sort of see what you say (the El Niño index is probably an anomaly to begin with, some kind of baseline is probably subtracted in order to compute it”
Indeed. Here is the best definition I can find for Nino 3.4 (NOAA):
“The index is defined as a three-month average of sea surface temperature departures from normal for a critical region of the equatorial Pacific (Niño 3.4 region; 120W-170W, 5N-5S). This region of the tropical Pacific contains what scientists call the “equatorial cold tongue,” a band of cool water that extends along the equator from the coast of South America to the central Pacific Ocean. Departures from average sea surface temperatures in this region are critically important in determining major shifts in the pattern of tropical rainfall, which influence the jet streams and patterns of temperature and precipitation around the world.”
.
The “normal” they talk about is the average for 1971 to 2000.
.
Based on that definition, it is pretty clear that the index is relative to a specific base period. The short term global variation is, as expected, in large part explained by the Nino 3.4 index, as has been long recognized.
.
The surprise (for me at least) is the strong correlation of the integral of the anomaly with the long term (and even not so long term!) global average trend.
.
I need to think about this a bit.
The base period for the Hadley anomaly is (as far as I can tell) 1960 to 1990, while the Nino 3.4 base period is 1971 to 2000.
.
Considering that these periods are not the same, it seems inevitable that scaling and offset would be required (heck, there are off-sets between all the major temperature indexes!).
Edit: Now I am not so sure about either of the base periods!
In my experience, the plot window is fine. Its the captured graphics that are poor. My solution to this has been to save the figures using the bitmap command, this lets one set the resolution separate from the “inches” of the figure used to compute the fonts. That’s what’s causing your text to be small.
e.g., I produced this graph using this code:
http://lostdollars.org/static/omo.png
# Plot – Net Open Market Operations
bitmap(“omo.png”, width=5,height=3,res=800)
par(mar=c(3,4,1,4))
plot(c(min(h41$date), max(h41$date)), c(-750,2300), “n”, ylab=”Billion USD”, xlab=””,xaxt=”n”)
axis.Date(1, at=seq(min(h41$date), max(h41$date), “1 year”), format=”%Y”, lty=0, line=1)
axis.Date(1, at=seq(min(h41$date), max(h41$date), “1 months”), format=”%b”, line=0, labels=TRUE)
lines(h41$date, h41$swaps/1000, col=”blue”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, -h41$sfp/1000, col=”red”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, h41$pomo/1000, col=”green”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, h41$total/1000, col=”black”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, h41$taf/1000, col=”purple”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, h41$other/1000, col=”orange”, type=”l”)
lines(h41$date, h41$cpff/1000, col=”brown”, type=”l”)
legend(“topleft”, c(“Currency Swaps”,”Treas. Sterilization.”,”POMO”,
“Total Balance Sheet”,”Term Auction Facility”,
“Other Loans to Dealers”, “Comm. Paper Facility”),
pch=1, col=c(“blue”, “red”, “green”,
“black”, “purple”,
“orange”, “brown”))
dev.off()
From the UCAR website, it seems that the Nino index is just an anomaly – which I interpret as taking the raw SST and subtracting a baseline value.
.
I can’t see any mention of detrending or differentiating the data, so I don’t quite get the “first derivative” bit. And yet from SteveF it looks like Nino 3.4 is a pretty good first derivative of global temps. So I must be missing something 🙁
Steve F @ 2:58 PM
Perhaps ‘natural cycles’ are overtottering ‘aerosol’ effects?
==================
deWitt
It would be surprising to me if there weren’t a good correlation between the various SST indices and global temperature.
Well it was not surprising to Tsonis either, so he simply did it.
But with 5 years of advance on you 🙂
There is a whole interesting discussion about the Tsonis papers at Judith Curry’s blog .
Actually “correlation” is not the right word but I’ll let you discover how it works according to Tsonis at : http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/04/scenarios-2010-2040-part-iii-climate-shifts/
There are some useful high level tips for getting R graphs to look good here:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2009/01/10-tips-for-making-your-r-graphics-look-their-best.html
I only ever use the Save As options in R’s graphic window for quick and dirty copies of graphics, and use the pdf() or bitmap() functions for anything I need to share with colleaguesor print out – the page above has details and examples on how to use these well.
The Nino 3.4 data has an underlying secular trend. When this trend is removed and the data is centered, the comparison with the Hadley temperature history looks like this:
http://i53.tinypic.com/2pzbbed.jpg
The trend through mid century is still “predicted” by the integrated value of the de-trended and re-centered Nino 3.4 data. The rise since then is not.
Perhaps some food for thought.
Very nice. Got a number for the rise translatable to climate sensitivity?
====================
There you go, Lucia. I will happily forward you his email if you would like. Will you concede that it is very possible higher concentrations of co2 will benefit mankind?
On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 1:59 PM, William Happer wrote:
Dear Dan,
Thanks for the kind note and the interesting questions.
I think 1000 ppm CO2 would be good for the world, and 2000 ppm would be a bit better. I recently gave a physics colloquium on this question at the University of California at Berkeley, and I am attaching a copy of the viewgraphs I used in hopes they may will flesh out why I think we need more CO2.
Best wishes,
Will
https://docs.google.com/a/mail.rmu.edu/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12d578c4538f0bb0&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/a/mail.rmu.edu/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D6e431210f5%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12d578c4538f0bb0%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dattd%26zw&sig=AHIEtbRdG4Dap1Ae_dSwhYmkKotw24hRTA
That is the link to the pdf he gave me. I’m sorry but this needs to be said, it is absolutely ridiculous to think that something we naturally exhale could be harmful.
The last thing the plankton said was: ‘Thanks for all the acid’.
=============
Kim (Comment#64963),
.
Yup.
http://i52.tinypic.com/i77yfd.jpg
.
http://i56.tinypic.com/15flz02.jpg
.
Note that there was a typo in the title of the two earlier graphics: should have said 0.065 not 0.06 in the titles.
.
Note also that the final graphic is based on total estimated forcings from all sources, including increases in CO2, NO2, Methane, Halocarbons, and tropospheric ozone, solar brightness variation with the solar cycle, a 6 year ocean lag constant, ~16% human generated aerosol offset, and some loss of surface heat to the deep ocean (currently assumed to be equal to ~0.3 watt per square meter of Earth’s surface). The estimated sensitivity depends on the accuracy of all these.
.
The sensitivity works out to ~0.47 degree per watt forcing (about 1.85 degrees per doubling). Is this right? I don’t know, but it is encouraging that 1) the odd “temperature hump” centered near 1940 is accounted for by the cumulative Nino 3.4 adjustment, and 2) major volcanoes (which I did not attempt to account for) are clearly visible in the final graph… even though they are not so easy to see in the original Hadley data. To my eye, the trend looks a bit non-linear (with sensitivity falling at higher temperatures) but that is just a guess.
Steve F, FWIW the detrended Nino 3.4 looks a lot like the temperature history of the US.
Lucia,
Sorry about kind of hijacking this thread on R.
SteveF– No problem. I’m getting R answers. The answers are also giving me enough info to be able to do better searches– and that’s invaluable with R.
Shoosh:
Sorry man, this is just a silly argument. You might want to check this counter example where 1700 people perished from CO2 poisoning in a natural disaster.
Anyway, if you drink too much water, an essential fluid for humans, you can die from water poisoning, and yet it makes up 60% of the body weight of the average adult male. If you drink too little, you can die from dehydration of course.
On the other hand, CO2 is a waste product for humans, it’s very easy to imaging that if you reintroduce more of that waste product back into the system, it can be lethal. Of course, unlike water, if you reduce CO2 levels to 0ppm (e.g., breath pure oxygen) it has no negative effects on our health.
OK, thanks, Steve. And thank you, lucia.
==============
Somebody hasn’t written an up-front user-friendly interface for R to set parameters? Struggling with syntax and obscure commands just isn’t worth the investment of time for lots of us. We want to use the tool, not customize it for simple jobs.
Gary–
I’m using the interface R people insist is “user friendly”. 🙂
It’s unfortunate, but there is a limit to how beautiful you can get figures using truly “user friendly” things like EXCEL. Yes, you can drag everything everywhere, but things move around when you refresh, and it’s sometimes difficult to snap things right where you want.
In contrast, R lets you be very anal retentive, but you need to learn how to do it, and the documentation is…. well… R fans insist it’s all good, and point out that if you have questions about “mysterycommand”, you can type ?mysterycommand. Ehrm… well…. ?mystercommand is a very, very nice feature. But as a method of documenting, it has it’s limitations. It’s a bit like telling people they can learn to write well by looking up words in a dictionary.
In my efforts to figure out why certain “ugly” things happened, I found this page:
http://research.stowers-institute.org/efg/R/Graphics/Basics/mar-oma/index.htm
It’s somewhat refreshing to find the person writing the note explain:
I stepped through the guys stuff, imitated his putting a box to show where oma was and, in the process discovered what causes the “X” and “Y” labels to get truncated when I switch to large font sizes.
Re: Carrick (Jan 7 11:12),
That depends on the pressure. At high partial pressure oxygen is toxic. That’s why diving more than 30 feet below the water surface for any significant length of time using a pure oxygen re-breather system or more than about 300 feet using compressed air is not recommended You’ll probably get nitrogen narcosis on compressed air, though, before you get that deep. I wouldn’t recommend breathing pure oxygen at 15 psi for extended periods either, not counting the severe fire hazard of high oxygen partial pressure.
CO2 is also involved in regulating your breathing.
Carrick,
That is an interesting story. I will need to research this event more. I disagree with your premise though that introducing more co2 will be hazardous to humans because this would probably result in a warmer climate, which is associated with more biomass on the earth, per Dr. Happer.
Also, this means Lucia is saying that she would prefer a reduction in earth’s biomass.
Shoosh.
Oh? Why would it be ridiculous to think something we excrete as a waste product could be toxic?
Would it be ridiculous to think human urine might be toxic? Or feces? Would you like some for dinner?
Anyway, as usual, the problem is you persist in presenting counter arguments to strawmen. The people worrying about AGW are not concerned about toxicity of CO2.
Shoosh–
Any chance you have a link that doesn’t require a username and password?
Sorry, I didn’t know it would do that. Dr. Happer sent me it in pdf form. I will email it to you when I get a chance.
Also, I get that just because co2 is natural and we exhale it doesn’t mean that it can’t be harmful. However, the government is not attempting to tax our excrement. And shouldn’t trees, plants and animals receive tax credits for eating up co2?
It does. I don’t know what name they give it where you live, but the entity responsible for processing and disposing of your excrement will charge you.
Shoosh:
It’s actually not my premise (there is no automatic relationship between increased CO2 and net hazard to human life).
My opinion is up to this point the effect of the added CO2 has been beneficial (more people die from winter weather than hot summer weather, hot weather doesn’t make roads impassable, cold weather and snow does, etc), but that there will be some level above which the harm that is done will be greater than the benefits, and some even more extreme level above which human life on the surface becomes untenable.
It’s the religious zealots (you know who you are) who think that its impossible for humans to ever change the earth in a beneficial way, and therefore anything we do must be OMG terrible.
bugs,
Did you know there is a difference between government taking money from you based on what comes out of you, and paying a company to get rid of your refuse (bodily and otherwise)?
I don’t know about you guys, but it’s my opinion that when government seizes a person’s money based on the fact that they are breathing (they can confiscate it because you are dead, too), government has become a little invasive. 😉
Andrew
DeWitt:
LOL. That’s a great point!
As I understand it, breathing pure O2 at 15 psi doesn’t have the slightest benefit for a healthy individual. Once your blood is fully oxygenated, it ceases to have any beneficial effects.
Carrick (Comment#65003),
“Once your blood is fully oxygenated, it ceases to have any beneficial effects.”
True, but if you choose to believe charlatans, at least refrain from smoking.
When I meet that person, I will pass on your message.
“Would it be ridiculous to think human urine might be toxic?”
I don’t think human urine is toxic in the scientific sense of the word “toxic”. (I can’t believe I have to comment on this lol) It is mostly water and after some filtration of the other compounds in it don’t the people living on the Intnl’ Space Station drink theirs?
Come on Lucia! Even the president called C02 pollution.
definition of pollution: environment being contaminated with harmful substances as a consequence of human activities
Liza said
I don’t know where you got that definition from, but it is lacking.
From wikipedia
That is a little better, still not quite there. Pollution is a complex issue.
Liza,
Pollution is not necessarily toxic.
As for urine– like CO2– it’s toxicity depends on concentration and or amount consumed.
Shoosh– My county makes me pay for sewage treatment. That’s taking my money. 🙂
lucia I know that. You know that. But honestly most people I talk to think C02 is equivalent to smog. And have no clue it’s natural or what we breath out. Another reason AGW is perfect propaganda.
liza (Comment#65012) January 7th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
The IPCC makes it’s case pretty clear, it’s the increase over the ‘recent’ historic levels that is causing the problem. It’s not their fault if people can’t understand what they are told.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll2bGfoio9M
Liza
Just because some people you know think of CO2 as similar to smog doesn’t mean that AGW is perfect propaganda. The issue with CO2 is that it is a greenhouse gas, not toxicity.
If you run across someone telling you it’s toxic, then you can present all your evidence that it’s not toxic. Meanwhile, no one here is saying that’s the issue. No one at the more activist AGW blogs is saying the issue is toxicity. (Not RC, not JoeRomm, not Eli Rabett not…. and so on.) The IPCC doesn’t say it’s toxic.
“Proving” it’s not toxic is pointless. Toxicity has nothing to do with AGW.
“Toxicity has nothing to do with AGW.”
Yes, but IF CO2 reaches 8% or 10% won’t you be sorry for discounting the threat?
Lucia: “If you run across someone telling you it’s toxic, then you can present all your evidence that it’s not toxic.”
I do.
Lucia: “no one here is saying that’s the issue”
LOL Oh really?
Lucia: “Proving†it’s not toxic is pointless. Toxicity has nothing to do with AGW.”
Why does C02 need to be regulated then? Why did the Supreme Court decide that?
People are saying that CO2 will acidify the oceans and that that will be toxic to corals etc. As the population is less paniced about CO2 as a greenhouse gas the argument is being switched to its toxicity (imagined or real). This switch implies to me that the goal is reducing use of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gas argument is just a means to an end.
John Knapp (Comment#65031) January 7th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
It’s not a switch, it has been predicted all along. The CO2 is not toxic again, no fish will die from ingesting extra CO2 that I know of. The acidification is something that indirectly affects the oceans biological systems. In the case of coral, it stunts their growth.
http://www.ucar.edu/communications/Final_acidification.pdf
This isn’t something they have just made up so that no-one gets suspicious a about their secret plan to take over the world. It is serious research, and it is being done around the world. The “means to an end” talk is conspiracy theory nonsense. It is impossible for completely independent groups can come up with a consistent story purely by conspiracy.
CO2 had been classified as a pollutant in the 1998 US Clean Air Act. This was reversed in 2003, but I can´t remember any of the AGW crowd ever objected to the 1998 decision and even in 2006 environmental groups pushed for legislation that would reinstate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. So, it´s all about perception of the hoi polloi who is indoctrinated for decades that CO2 is dangerous and our children are still brainwashed every day with that idea. No Pressure, of course. Of course Baghdad Bugs is seeing that in a different light.
“The acidification is something that indirectly affects the oceans biological systems. In the case of coral, it stunts their growth.”
Not so fast read it ALL:
http://www.c3headlines.com/are-oceans-becoming-acidic/
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/acid2.htm#carbon_situation
John Knapp, The very words “acidification of the ocean” is an example of AGW propaganda at it finest.
bugs, the Supreme Court here in America and their ruling, for C02 as a pollutant that needs to be regulated, had nothing at all to do with “ocean acidification”. Try again!
Hoi Polloi (Comment#65037) January 8th, 2011 at 5:30 am
Yep! I agree.
Hoi Polloi (Comment#65037) January 8th, 2011 at 5:30 am
It meets the definition of a pollutant. Global Warming will be dangerous, and is already giving indications of the danger that is coming.
Liza
From your link (it is paraphrased, so the actual paper may be different)
Reduced ability to calcify, just as I said.
Now I understand bugs. You don’t have any reading skills at all.
“Global Warming will be dangerous, and is already giving indications of the danger that is coming.”
bugs,
Just wondering, for how long do you intend to keep making this assertion? What event(s) do you forsee possibly causing a change in this perpetual declaration? Can you conceive of any such events? What would they be, specifically?
Andrew
Re: liza (Jan 8 06:36),
Go talk to a few analytical chemists. Every one I know, including myself, would use acidification to describe a reduction in pH. It doesn’t matter if the initial value was 2 or 12. Just because you don’t like it and think it’s semantically loaded doesn’t mean it’s incorrect terminology.
Re: #65052
I’m fine with “acidification” meaning the reduction of pH even when the ocean is clearly not acid as long as we also use the term “freezing” during La Ninas when the ocean temperatures are dropping. After all, it does not matter what the initial value is – just that the temperatures are moving towards 32 degrees.
OMG! The oceans are freezing!
Whatever you want to call it DeWitt it is not happening. There were charts included in my links AND explanations to why a one number value for the pH of an ocean or all the oceans isn’t “scientific” too.
That one study on the poor poor corals has to bring up the concentration of C02 to 3970 ppm to get the ph down to to 7.19 and one chemistry definition I found online says “Addition of an acid to a solution until the pH falls below 7” .
The fear mongering continues. Also the government bodies pushing this nonsense say “acidification” will make these creatures die. Do you see anywhere in this paper that suggests that even at the highest level of concentration and lowest pH? Furthermore, those links I provided show that other creatures who corals depend on for food LIKE added C02.
Now let’s talk about the “accelerated” sea level rise which is happening… not. (Edit: had to put that word “accelerated” because we all know that sea level has been rising since the last ice age)
torn8o (Comment#65054) January 8th, 2011 at 11:46 am
Good point! 😉 lol (Your comment wasn’t there when I was creating mine.)
Bugs,
No conspiracy is needed. I am an early baby boomer (born in 49). I remember from my college days in the late sixties the college zeitgeist was that communisim was good. That capitalism was bad. That people were evil and greedy and needed to be controlled for their own good. At that time it was all the rage to condem urban sprawl, control population, move to mass transit, reduce energy consumption, make everybody diet (were all fat greedy capitalist don’t you know). This was all justified based on availability of resources, then that fell through and the argument was switched to pollution (acid rain etc.) That was pretty much solved and now it has switched to AGW which is again becoming less urgent for most people and the switch is going to “other” negatives of western society such as ocean acidification (which if you look at the amount of limestone sedimented out over the ages is plausible unlikely). Throughout all of this the “cure” is the same.
…”condem urban sprawl, control population, move to mass transit, reduce energy consumption, make everybody diet (were all fat greedy capitalist don’t you know).”
If the treatment stays the same and the diagnosis keeps changing one has to believe that the treatment is the goal and the diagnosis is irrevalent and suspect.
This is not a conspiricy, it is just a surfeit of aging hippies who never grew up (and their syncophantic followers), who are unwilling to let go of their sophomoric thinking and have spent 50 years developing great skills in confirmation bias and propangandizing society into accepting their vision of a perfect society.
What indications? Like thousands of dead crabs on England’s shores? Thousands of dead birds and millions of dead fish in the US? Global Warming or signs of the 2012 catastrophy (both in the same category IMO). Or just the freezing cold.
Ocean acidification is a truthful statement even if the ocean isn’t acid. The analog to temperature is not “freezing” but “colder.” You can’t truthfully say that temperatures outside are freezing if it isn’t below the freezing point of water. You can truthfully say that it is getting colder if the temperature drops from 98 to 97 degrees, even if those temperatures don’t meet most people’s definitions of “cold.”
Re: #65059
You are mixing analogs. The analog for temperature getting “colder” is that the pH of oceans is “falling”. You can’t truly say the oceans are acid if the pH is not below 7. Therefore, the oceans cannot be “becoming more acid” if they are not already acid, any more so than the oceans are “freezing” if the water temperature is not below freezing. But hey, if the oceans are acidifying, then they are also freezing.
torn8o:
I wouldn’t admit to that in public.
torn8o:
.
“More acidic” is different than saying “the oceans are acidic” (not “the oceans are acid”).
“More acidic” just means that the pH level is decreasing. It’s the term that gets used in science, regardless of what you and your blog buddies decide should be right.
Freezing implies a change of state. Cooling does implies “less warm” and it is an exact analog to “more basic” and and “less basic” or “more acidic” and “less acidic”.
(FTIW, one could use “less basic” to describe the fall in pH level, it’s just a clumsy construction.)
Re: liza (Jan 8 11:57),
On that point we agree. pH varies with depth because the ocean isn’t a beaker of salt water in the lab. There’s all sorts of biology going on that affects pH as well as the strong buffering effect of all the bicarbonate, not to mention calcium and magnesium carbonate suspended solids. I also disagree with those who claim that coral and other calcifying organisms will disappear from the oceans at any projected level of CO2 for the next century. The lab experiments are largely bogus. They make a step change in CO2, or worse use mineral acid, to lower the pH in a tank in a lab and claim disaster is just around the corner. Overfishing and pollution are as or more damaging to coral, but when the subject of declining reefs gets raised, somehow global warming is always listed first. Coral gets herpes too.
Re: #65062
Well, I am free to decide what I think is right, regardless of what you or your blog buddies decide is right. I don’t think it is proper to say that something is becoming more “x” if it is not already “x”. I believe it is more proper to say something is becoming less “y” when it is “y” – i.e. – the oceans are becoming less alkaline. Of course, that connotation does not have the desired effect.
torno8o,
I guess you can self-apply whatever rules you like, but English speakers often use the structure of become more “x” when things are not already “x”.
Cool books will often tell cooks to allow hot things “to cool”, or suggest you permit cold butter to warm to room temperature. You can also “soften” ice cream that is currently “hard” (i.e. not soft). We can sweeten things that are currently bitter or sour, and spice up things that are currently flavorless.
In contrast, I’ve never read a cook book suggest I “deheat” milk after scalding, “deharden butter” before making cookies or hear people suggest I can “deblandify” food by adding cayenne.
So, it seems to me that English speakers very frequently say something is becoming “more x” when it is not already “x”.
lucia – point taken, however, your examples are subjective – i.e. there is no defined threshold for when ice cream changes from hard to soft or when milk changes from hot to cold. Acid/alkaline and frozen/liquid have objective thresholds.
torn8o:
That’s just you throwing your personal bias into the mix. You are just objecting to the word usage because of the connotations that you see in it.
Nonetheless, the words have agreed to meaning, and saying the oceans are become “more acidic” is accepted terminology when what you mean is the pH level is decreasing.
What the implications of decreasing pH measurements are (and whether they are being done correctly) is a different thing than claiming that people are using the wrong terminology, when in fact it is a nearly universal term in science.
torno–
Well, there is a problem with the threshhold. Freezing is a state change. Either it’s frozen or it’s not. There is no “more frozen” or “less frozen”.
Even if there is a specific threshold between alkaline and acid, acidify works more like solidify, which works a lot like hardening. The word doesn’t function like “freezing”, “boiling”, “subliming” or even “vaporizing” because each of those verbs describe a transition from one state to another. Either something is solid, liquid or vapor.
But if you want to talk about dealkalizing the oceans, I guess you are free to do so. But I think it’s pretty common for English speakers to prefer the word that does not include a negation and “acidifying” something alkaline works fine for me.
torn8o:
The examples are not equivalent, solid (frozen ) versus liquid imply a change in state. Going from greater than 7 to less than seven is actually nothing magical, if you look at the definition of the term. In fact it’s just
pH = -log10(C_H+)
where C_H+ is the concentration of H+ ions in grams/liter.
A value of “7” is just the value where C_H+ = 1e-7 grams/liter.
That’s hardly the same thing as saying “changing state from solid to liquid” for example, so your analogy isn’t just strained, it’s completely broken.
I agree with torn8o.
To say the oceans are becoming ‘more acidic’ due to lower pH is equivalent to saying an obese person who loses a few pounds weight is becoming ‘more anorexic’.
The difference between this and, say, temperature ‘cooling’ is that there is no boundary for cooling whereas there is a boundary for pH. Once that boundary is reached, then it would be true to use the term ‘acidification’. Until then, it is used – by consensus – because it sounds scarier. Remember, when it comes to cAGW… “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story!”
How about “slimmer”.
Anyway, the earth’s oceans aren’t ph=12 or something. Likening the alkalinity to obesity makes it seem you’d have called me obese before I dieted last year. According to the health authorities, my BMI was just on the “overweight” side of overweight/normal divide. I describe myself as having become “slimmer”, but I don’t describe myself as “slim” even now. I’m “normal”.
Yay we agree on something DeWitt!
My husband looked at this and said the word “neutral” for water (at these “drops” in ph numbers) or “less alkaline” is way more appropriate. Saying “more acidic” is for scare tactics.
this is from an article/commentary in The Times:
“Start with a few facts. The oceans are not acid but alkaline, with an average pH of about 8.15 (0-7 being acid, 7-14 being alkaline). But they vary both in space and time, Arctic seas being less strongly alkaline than tropical, and some bays and reefs being actually acid because of underwater volcanic emissions. The dissolution of carbon dioxide in the oceans may lower the pH slightly to about 7.9 or 7.8 by the end of the century at the worst – still alkaline.
Environmentalists like to call this a 30% increase in acidity, because it sounds more scary than a 0.3 point (out of 14) decrease in alkalinity, but no matter. It is still well within the bounds of normal variation over space and time: the pH of the water intake at the Monterey aquarium varies by almost twice as much as this every month. The difference between the pH of the seas off Hawaii and Alaska is greater than this.”
see this chart of Monterey aquarium data (it was in the links I provided before):
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/global20.gif
Liza said
Another non response. It says quite clearly, calcification is reduced. That is the claim that was made in the first post I made on the topic. Your link was just misdirection. It said there was no problem because something else increased, it ignored the reduced calcification. A coral reef’s foundations are it’s calcium ‘skeleton’.
Liza said
They got it completely wrong. If a persons heart rate goes up to 150 because they are exercising, that is in the bounds of normal. If it stays at 150, that is bad, even if it is in the normal bounds. Comparing the difference in pH between different parts of the ocean is also nonsense. The pH will be dropping globally. Life adapts to it’s environment, and optimises itself to those conditions. That’s how evolution works.
Liza,
The pH scale is logarithmic. Thus a change in pH of 8.15 to 7.80, for example, is a change in the concentration of hydronium ion (the acid component) from 7.1E-09 to 1.6E-08. This corresponds to a change of about 120% in acidity
Re: liza (Jan 8 16:44),
Your husband is a geologist. I have a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and 34 years experience in an industrial R&D lab. I’m the expert here not him. Unlike scientific hypotheses, terminology is controlled by consensus and authority. Sometimes it changes, like the change in designation of x-ray emission lines, but that’s done by international bodies like IUPAC. When you say a solution is becoming more acidic, everyone with any knowledge of chemistry knows what you mean, the pH is being reduced. If you say a solution is being neutralized, then you don’t know what’s happening. The solution may be alkaline or acidic. The pH may be going up or down. And the word neutral has it’s own semantic loading. The important thing for things like coral is the concentration of carbonate, either dissolved or dispersed. Adding CO2, all other things being equal, will reduce the concentration of carbonate.
Interesting quote, does that also apply to AGW (in the odd case it exists)? Or, are we doomed, as Hansen claims?
The term “ocean acidification†was coined in 2003 by two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett, who were working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…
Caldeira told me that he had chosen the term “ocean acidification†quite deliberately, for its shock value.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#65079) January 8th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
He is an environmental scientist who cleans up water all the time. Professional licensed geologist: a scientist who is an official expert. We are talking about water. You don’t think he knows about water and chemistry or the “correct” terminology? LOL
He says you are just being a word jerk and a snob. You arguing about something stupid that means nothing at all just to deter the FACT that the scare tactics and propaganda dished out by the AGW crowd is even more stupid.
torn8o (Comment#65081) January 8th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
Yep!!
Liza,
You have a lot of opinions for someone who does not understand pH.
Oh bologna Owen. I know more then most people you are trying to scam with your percentages and scary words.
Owen @(Comment#65078) :
Your example is still a small change; still in the natural variability; (and going toward “neutral” ha!!) and none of it is even happening in the ocean so what is your point anyway?
Bugs,
“That is the claim that was made in the first post I made on the topic.”
No it wasn’t you said “growth is stunted”. The paper says “Yet in spite of this reduction in skeletal growth, they report that “tissue biomass (measured by protein concentration) was found to be higher in both species after 14 months of growth under increased CO2.” And DeWitt said the lab experiments are bogus anyway so talk to him! I provided many more papers for you to read!!!!
‘small change’ can mean a massive difference to a biological system.
You still don’t what ‘still with natural variability’ means,even though I explained it. Has the average value changed? Yes, it has, it’s been measured. Is there a trend? Yes there is, it’s towards the acid side of the balance. Is it caused by the increasing amount of CO2 in the sea? Yes it is.
Can you spot the misdirection he put in there? The ’tissue biomass’ is not the coral skeleton. The ’tissue biomass’ needs that coral skeleton, which is what is being affected.
DeWitt,
Seems to me that the bicarbonate/carbonate balance in the ocean surface water has to be a function of both CO2 partial pressure in the air and temperature of the water. I mean, if the water is colder, then there will be more dissolved CO2 and lower carbonate at the same air concentration of CO2. So if global warming raises the temperature of the ocean, then this ought to partially off-set the effect of rising atmospheric CO2. Do you have any feel for the magnitude of this effect?
bugs (Comment#65087) January 8th, 2011 at 7:51 pm
I am watching football while arguing with you knuckle heads.
I’ve had a full day besides that. I didn’t even know there was a shooting in Arizona until a few minutes ago.
“Can you spot the misdirection he put in there?” Um…”He” is the scientist bugs; who wrote the paper. Sheesh. Besides it was an experiment and not real life.
You don’t know what you are talking about. Read those papers. Look at the graph of Monterey Bay pH fluctuations.
liza:
Nah. He’s just being right.
You should listen to her bugs, she’s an expert on that subject.
It wasn’t the scientist who created the misdirection. He stated the facts. The misdirection was the link you provided that said
It got more biomass, but less of a skeleton to hang it on. Not really much use to the coral in the long run.
liza (Comment#65089) January 8th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
Life will be adapted to those conditions, and the average pH will be changing there, becoming more acidic. How will life there cope with that change?
Re: torn8o (Comment#65081) January 8th, 2011 at 6:33 pm
If that’s the true story then it’s kind of unfortunate. “Acidification” already had an established meaning for chemical oceanographers, and it’s something other than what’s been happening in the oceans.
oliver, what’s your term for what is happening here, and what is your justification for using language besides that adopted by the general field of science if you don’t agree that decreasing pH levels in the oceans can be described as more acidic?
Also what torn8o said was false, about “ocean acidification” first being coined in 2003. Apparently he doesn’t know how to use Google Scholar. The earliest reference I was able to find in two minutes of searching dated back to 1992 (see page 456 of that document):
Congratulations, Carrick, on finding an earlier reference. My hat is off to you. You are truly amazing. However, you conveniently ignored that the term is still connected to AGW.
Carrick (Comment#65115) January 9th, 2011 at 9:04 am
LOL He’s an attorney.
Here’s the justification for torn80 assertion:
Google “The Darkening Sea” by Elizabeth Kolbert
page four, column 3, 2nd paragraph. 2006
So much propaganda so little time.
BTW “Ken Caldeira ” is mentioned in the 2nd link I shared which has a lot of useful info. Ken used no real world data for his model the author of my link claims. Caldeira’s bio says he was a “software engineer” in the 80’s for Wall Street; went back to school got a Phd and became quite the who’s who of the climate modeler crowd, works for the Carnegie science institute; member: IPCC and AGU. And has gone to Rio. 😉
Found this too:
Scripps Institution Hosts Paleoceanography Conference
Scripps Institution of Oceanography will host the 10th International Conference on Paleoceanography Monday through Sept. 3 in Mandeville Auditorium at UCSD. Sessions begin at 8:30 a.m. daily. The conference is held every three years at venues throughout the world. About 500 participants are expected. Delegates will represent more than 20 countries.
Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution, who coined the phrase “ocean acidification,†will explain how several specific examples from earth history lend quantitative perspective on the issue of future climate sensitivity to increased greenhouse gases. His eynote presentation is Monday at 5:30 p.m. Richard Mortlock of Rutgers University will present a new record of sea level variability over the last 60,000 years. This record captures the growth/melting of continental ice in unprecedented detail. His presentation is Sept. 1 at 8:30 a.m. Stephen Eggins of Australian National University will present new “chemical maps†…
http://www.whoi.edu/OCB-OA/FAQs/
“Introduction
Ocean acidification is a new field of research in which most studies have been published in the past 10 years. Hence, there are some certainties, but many questions remain. Ocean acidification is also a multi-disciplinary research area that encompasses topics such as chemistry, paleontology, biology, ecology, biogeochemistry, modeling, and social sciences.”
Re: SteveF (Jan 8 20:02),
For the concentration of dissolved CO2 to remain constant with a doubling of partial pressure, the temperature would have to go up a lot, ~16 K. So a temperature increase from doubling CO2 of 3 K would offset only a small part of the first order effect.
And so this post isn’t completely off-topic. There’s an R package, seacarb, (that’s a link to the ‘help’ file for the package) that will calculate carbonate chemistry in sea water. You should be able to get the package itself directly through R. As is typical with R help files, it only helps if you already know what you’re doing.
torn8o:
And my hat is off to you for constantly pushing anti-AGW drivel. Everything you have claimed on this topic has been shown to be wrong. That takes some real talent.
You do realize you could quit parroting your own sources of propaganda and learn to think for yourself. Don’t you?
liza:
LOL, he’s quoting scientists and giving references.
And you’re the wife of a rock hound, and think you know more than the experts.
Wow – my bad for not realizing that one is not supposed to post on this blog unless one is an expert (as determined by the Carricks) in the subject being discussed. I apologize to all. Congratulations on turning this blog into a RealClimate clone.
torn8o, now you’re just sounding foolish. I never said you had to be an expert, or that I was even the one to make that determination. I would hope you can reason better than this.
Liza seems to think the fact her husband is a geologist gives her a unique and special insight not afforded to those who merely spend 20 years of their life studying on a topic.
DeWitt, Lucia and I have simply pointed out to you and others that there is nothing improper about using the word “ocean acidification” to describe a decrease in pH level. We are right, it is common terminology, and further there is nothing particularly magical about a concentration of 10^-7 grams equivanent H+/liter solution aka pH of 7 (other than this is close to what water is, when it is pure).
I have further pointed out your source was wrong—there are numerous examples from the 1990s in which the term ocean acidification appears, I literally spent two whole minutes and pulled up the earliest term I could find in that time. I suspect one could find articles from the 1980’s if you were so inclined. I was simply busting your story about it being made up by Ken Caldeira and Michael Wickett.
You can get as indignant as you want about it, but the facts are straightforward for any reasonable person to ascertain: You and the source you gullibly believed are simply flat wrong.
Carrick (Comment#65125) January 9th, 2011 at 10:57 am
Rock hound? What a bunch of bull. That’s AGW religious speak labeling and name calling. You’ve lost it Carrick. At least the “rock hounds” are actually outside when they study and research the planet- not some cubical lab dwelling denizen staring at some computer screen all day.
from geology.com:
Geology is the study of the Earth, the materials of which it is made, the structure of those materials, and the processes acting upon them. It includes the study of organisms that have inhabited our planet. An important part of geology is the study of how Earth’s materials, structures, processes and organisms have changed over time.
You’d better write Scripps because they gave the title of creating the term “ocean acidification” to that scientist. I’m sure you know so much better then they do about everything!
DeWitt when you said:
“Your husband is a geologist. I have a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry and 34 years experience in an industrial R&D lab. I’m the expert here not him.”
as guys my age are prone to do you got me to reminiscing about my graduate school days (inorganic chemistry) when I worked for a professor of analytical chemistry. He was a no-nonsense guy who I really enjoyed working with even when he no “nonsensed” me. He had no patience for the less serious undergraduate students whose conversations I would hear in the lab where I worked next to his office. They would come with excuses and/or just to polish the apple and he would have none of it.
One exception was when this drop-dead beautiful girl came through my lab to see the professor. I overheard the conversation and she was asking fairly reasonable questions, but my professor did not appear to exhibit his usual impatience. I could not confront him directly about his apparent and momentary change in demeanor so I said something to the effect that a beautiful day could do wonders to one’s attitude. He merely smiled. He could be stern, but he did have good sense of humor.
What’s wrong with being a rock hound liza? I spent about 4 years in high school doing just that (amateur version of course). The area I grew up in was very geologically interesting.
But the mere fact you are married to a geologist doesn’t confer a special wisdom upon you not possessed by us mere mortals.
Carrick (Comment#65130) January 9th, 2011 at 11:33 am
Project much?
“In 2003 Caldeira reported these findings in the journal Nature, coining the term “ocean acidification.—
Discover magazine:
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-ocean-acidification-a-global-case-of-osteoporosis
:A recent study on rapid climate change and ocean acidification appearing in Science concluded that oceanic carbonate concentrations will drop below 200 µmol kg-1 when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations reach 450-550ppm, a scenario that may occur by the middle of this century. … By the end of the century, climate scientist Ken Caldeira—who with Michael Wickett originally coined the term “ocean acidificationâ€â€”concludes that “there is no place left with the kind of chemistry where corals grow today.†The diminution of reefs could also result in half or more of coral-associated fauna becoming rare or extinct…
http://www.terrain.org/articles/21/burns.htm
Edit: so according to Carrick’s bust we should not trust the information about AGW and Ocean Acidification from Discover, Nature and Science magazines from now on. You can tell there is some sort of agenda going on here… LOL!!!
liza, thanks for your usual inability to read, think and comprehend.
The claim was made by torn8o:
It was not coined in 2003 and not by them.
Why would you trust Discover magazine in any case? It’s not a primary source.
liza:
Last time I checked, I didn’t claim knowledge based on marriage and cranial osmosis.
“What’s wrong with being a rock hound liza?”
Nothing. For the record and for your information (for the last time) Dewitt and Carrick my husband’s masters degree is in Environmental Geology and he’s not a rock hound. He spends his days cleaning up pollution and this includes a huge amount of time dealing with water. I wonder how he manages with your idea of what he knows and doesn’t know? I would contend that he knows just as much if not more then either of you and he is more easy going and DOWN TO EARTH. Even the state of California deemed him worthy and professional (he can also sign and stamp official documents) He also was an EPA regulator for a few years too but moved to the public sector so he could actually DO SOMETHING positive for the environment instead of well…(that’s another story! And I am positive you wouldn’t want to hear it you don’t like real life!) Sheesh. Have a nice day!
“Last time I checked, I didn’t claim knowledge based on marriage and cranial osmosis.”
Carrick, you and the rest of the denizens are not so smart. torn8o didn’t make a claim; he just posted a quote to get a rise out of you. In fact that’s what all of us are doing. Yet you keep saying something is wrong with us.
This whole conversation started because C02 is being sold as a toxic substance to the public. And nothing any of you have said disproves this. In fact the term “ocean acidification” is a convenient word in the whole fiasco and story of AGW “science” as it relates to public information. I noticed nobody answered my question about the Supreme court deeming that C02 can be regulated. That’s funny isn’t it? LOL
And there you are telling little me “ms. public” herself that just because I am married to an environmental scientist I don’t know much ….as much as all you smart people. LMAO
DeWitt Payne,
Re: “acidification”
That’s an interesting perspective. I remember a discussion I had with “Phil Dot” on this issue. At the time, after Googling to find a bunch of “standard” definitions of the word “acidification”, I seemed to have convinced myself that calling a move from a pH of ~8.2 to one somewhere below 8 “acidification” was common only to “environmental chemists,” and perhaps on occasion, soil chemists.
In my 30+ years as a chemist (4 as an Inorganic Chemistry grad student, 29 as an industrial chemisty), such a change would be more likely be referred to as an “adjustment” or (yes) “neutralization” rather than as “acidification”.
I suppose it’s also possible I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd.
I’m surprised Boris and Nathan (our “fingerprint” lexiconists and wizards of wordsmithery) haven’t weighed in on this.
Re: liza (Jan 8 18:41),
I’m not the one who’s complaining about other peoples word usage. That would be you. Glass houses and all that.
liza:
So we have two possibilities here, either torn8o believed in (in which case he’s gullible) or he’s posting something just to “get a rise” out of people, which makes him dishonest. You admit you are doing that, which does make you intellectually dishonest, and is something that I’ve known for a while now.
I’m not correcting his errors “to get a rise out of” anybody, neither do I think are Lucia nor DeWitt. For some of us, the truth actually matters and this isn’t just an intricate game of bait and counter bait.
Re: lucia (Comment#65073) January 8th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Lucia,
I have no idea why you turned my comment into you talking personally about your weight! My analogy was – fairly obviously, i thought – making the point that terms can change when boundaries (or thresholds, if you prefer) are crossed. When someone loses weight, you certainly can call them ‘slimmer’ but once they cross the anorexic threshold you would not refer to them as slimmer, you would refer to them as being ‘more anorexic’. It is the same with ocean acidification. Once the neutral boundary has been passed, it would be perfectly ok to refer to the oceans becoming ‘more acidic’. But, until the pH gets to that boundary, the term ‘less basic’ or ‘less alkaline’ will say exactly what is happening without invoking a sense of ‘catastrophe’. To use the term ‘ocean acidification’ now is nothing more than scare tactics, even if it is ‘consensus’ scare tactics.
By the way, using BMI as an indicator is pretty inaccurate as it does not take into account body fat. It only relates height to weight. Most strength athletes would be considered overweight according to BMI. Arnold Schwarzenegger was technically (BMI) obese in his prime! So I wouldn’t worry too much about BMI… 🙂
Carrick,
You aren’t making any sense. There’s a third option!! Acknowledge the truth already.
The media, an Oceanography institute and those science magazines said a certain scientist coined the phrase “ocean acidification” or they repeated this. Now there’s another chemist commenting here on the use of the words in chemistry with another experience.
Maybe all of the ways to describe ocean ph are correct but a certain way is chosen overall to give to the public regarding AGW information. Furthermore paper of yours from 1992 is from a POLITICAL “green” gathering in Rio written by a lawyer.
Okay… ummmm…. so the oceans will not boil in the temperature sense, they’ll boil from over acidification… is that it?
Re: #65127
Look up the definition of “coined”.
As far as sounding foolish – thanks, but don’t worry about me. I’m not the one claiming some large number of years of expertise and then arguing about minutiae on the internet with whom I arrogantly consider an idiot and all the while not understanding the real point.
Arfur Bryant (Comment#65148) January 9th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Thank you. 🙂
MikeC apparently so!
torn8o:
No need, I know precisely what it means, and it predates them and their publication, as I’ve demonstrated.
Re: John M (Jan 9 12:50),
Suppose someone in the lab said to you: “The pH of that solution is too high, please acidify it to pH8.” Would you understand what you were being asked to do? Or would you complain about the word choice? That’s the question here, not what word would be most commonly used instead of acidify.
No need, I know precisely what it means, and it predates them and their publication, as I’ve demonstrated.
But of course you do. Touche.
Carrick did you know that the lawyer guy you say used the term first also wrote this:
Christopher D. Stone proposed giving legal rights to trees, streams, and all other parts of the environment in his essay “Should Trees Have Standing?—Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objectsâ€.
just saying… I hope my tree doesn’t sue me anytime soon 😉
PS The question here is what words the AGW people chose to “educate” the public!!
liza, I’m not debating Stone or his philosophy. In that paper, Stone was actually quoting Schneider on the ocean acidification part, which appears to have appeared in a 1990 Sci Am article by Schneider.
As to what Stone thinks, are lots of wackos out there on both sides. That’s my opinion…
DeWitt Payne (Comment#65155)
January 9th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Suppose someone in the lab said to you: “The pH of that solution is too high, please acidify it to pH8.†Would you understand what you were being asked to do? Or would you complain about the word choice? That’s the question here, not what word would be most commonly used instead of acidify.
Whether I would “complain” I suppose depends on your definition of the word “complain”. 🙂
But I would request that in the future, that individual use the word “adjust.” The reason is that I would bet dollars to donuts that some day, that same individual would simply ask someone to “acidify” the solution without specifying the pH. In some labs, that might mean to simply add enough acid until the solution turns pH paper red. By using the word “adjust”, we can assure that leaving out “to pH8” would lead to the question “adjust to what”? If he/she mistakenly said only “acidify”, some very bad things could happen, especially in a plant lab. This is less hypothetical than some might think.
This is also why I’ve always insisted that people who work for me know the difference between “clear” and “colorless”, and “melt” and “dissolve”.
I am a fan of pOH myself and basically love to use terms like dealkalization in order to avoid the more controversial acidification.
Is not some of this discussion a bit of waste of time? The pH scale is an objective measure that is easy to conceptualize, if you understand logarithmic scales, but that in itself means nothing unless someone wants to discuss in detail what a given change in oceanic pH might do to organisms living there, dissolving salts, etc. If you keep to specifics and details I think a lot of the wasted band width gets saved – not that I do not waste band width on my own long winded posts.
You can get snippets of useful information, like the effect of CO2 partial pressure on the concentration of derived anions of CO2, it’s just that the rest of the back and forth makes finding that information more difficult.
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment#65161) January 9th, 2011 at 3:42 pm
Waste of time? Yep especially since the “acidification” of the ocean isn’t even happening. 😉
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2010/may/05may2010a1.html
BTW I looked and found Real Climate’s early post on this subject and what they said “to educate” us low level people. The post was actually entitled “The Acid Ocean”. As bugs would say “Can you spot the misdirection they put in there?” 🙂
And the same bantering in the comments happened about the wording and the paper (Caldeira, K. and Wickett, M.E. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425: 365.) that “coined the phrase” according Science, Nature, Scripps etc is discussed and the author even participated in the comments. Interesting read after all this talk here. Cheers and good night!
… not so sure about Discover Magazine… but Science and Nature aren’t worth anything unless ya wind em around a toilet paper insert… and wipe accordingly
Oh for the love of…
You’re arguing semantics. Nobody can “win” this because there is no “correct” answer. I don’t care who you’re married to.
“Acidification” is a perfectly acceptable scientific term for pH-reduction. I agree it can be misinterpreted by laypersons and the very word “acid” may be loaded for some. It would probably be a communication improvement if the media and scientists used “pH-reduction” instead. It would be still more precise, if somewhat clunky, if they used “alkalinity reduction”, but that wouldn’t mean “acidification” or “pH reduction” were falsehoods or propaganda.
If Realclimate headlined a post with “The Acid Ocean”, (link?) then that was misleading, although typical of the site.
Here you go matt:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-acid-ocean-the-other-problem-with-cosub2sub-emission/
“If Realclimate headlined a post with “The Acid Oceanâ€, (link?) then that was misleading, although typical of the site.”
Scientists… misleading… what th-…?
Is that possible? 😛
Andrew
Liza, when you say
“BTW I looked and found Real Climate’s early post on this subject and what they said “to educate†us low level people. The post was actually entitled “The Acid Oceanâ€. As bugs would say “Can you spot the misdirection they put in there?†”
I would agree that that title was more advocacy related than science – but then even us low level people understand that RC is all about advocacy.
My point is that if we never get by the rather obvious we cannot learn about and discuss the more interesting details and specifics. I would suspect that the RC supporters would like nothing better than the so-called skeptic to get tied up in their own underwear discussing sematics.
Liza and Andrew… Neither of you understand ocean acidification in the AGW context… it’s when they sit on the beach and drop some purple haze or microdot and the sand turns into a jewelry box and the waves become smoke and blow away in the wind
Posted by Liza
Thanks. That was bad even for Realclimate. I only skimmed, but as far as I can see the whole article fails to mention either the current ocean pH or the magnitude of any measured changes.
MikeC, why would anyone be against that?
Kenneth Fritsch (Comment#65169) January 9th, 2011 at 7:29 pm
I posted links to science and details in my initial comments as well. Even in that one you quoted. 🙂
The hubs and the kid have got the TV tied up with their special dvd series/show so here I am again…
Hi AndrewKy!!
MikeC, do they really actually go to the beach? 😉
good night everybody!! this time really! 🙂
MikeC,
A dragon lives forever
But not so, little boys
(Of course I read the authors of PTMD maintain the song is not about drug use, but the loss of innocence.
Oh I bet some of us wish we could put the genie back in the bottle…)
Andrew
The result of ocean acidification is the dissolution of the shells of certain sea creatures. If said creatures had a say, I doubt they’d argue that the terminology was too “alarmist,” nor would they agree that it is similar to obese people becoming “more anorexic.”
“If said creatures had a say, I doubt they’d argue that the terminology was too “alarmist,†nor would they agree that it is similar to obese people becoming “more anorexic.â€
Wow. We’ve really gone off to Honah Lee defending Global Warming, haven’t we? 😉
Andrew
Re: Carrick (Comment#65115) January 9th, 2011 at 9:04 am
“Acidity” (minus “alkalinity”) of seawater means something different from “lowness of pH.” The justification is, well, that’s just how it is.
oliver, you certainly wouldn’t use “less alkaline” to describe a lowered pH level, would you? (Note I haven’t fallen into the trap of saying “less alkaline,” I’ve consistently used said “less basic”.) As you probably know you can reduce the pH of a solution by adding CO2 without reducing its alkalinity.
As I understand it, “less alkaline” isn’t just a less loaded way of saying “more acidic”, it’s incorrect terminology here.
Acids and bases are opposites, and can be relate to pH level (acids in an aqueous solution have a pH less than 7, and bases a pH greater than 7 of course), alkalinity has a completely different meaning:
That said, you never answered my question.
Carrick,
Acidity and alkalinity are quantitative measures which are paired much as pH and pOH are. They all have well-defined meanings. However, ‘acidity’ is not ‘the lowness of pH.’ It has nothing to do with how ‘loaded’ a term is, although it appears to have been appropriated to describe the lowering of ocean pH due to rising CO2 precisely because it’s ‘loaded.’
Now what was your question again?
torn8o (Comment#65118) January 9th, 2011 at 10:24 am
That is probably because adding CO2 to the oceans makes them more acidic.
lucia (Comment#64915) says, “I’m under the impression that Bob Tisdale discusses taking the trend out of some index.”
Yup. Just finished. The “global” surface temp dataset is GISS LOTI from 60S-60N.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2011/01/can-most-of-rise-in-satellite-era.html
You continued, “That could be very important for SST which, after all, has the same overall rising trend as the global temperature.”
SST has a lower trend. Land exaggerates the trend and variations of the oceans.
Regards
Bob Tisdale (Comment#65206) January 10th, 2011 at 4:57 am
Enso is not a forcing, it is a cycle.
Where did he say it’s a forcing?
I guess what the British crabs were saying, “I’m cold! I’m so so cold!!” 😉
Good thing those crabs aren’t here in Texas… bbbbblistering cold
Arfur Bryant
My point is your analogy using anorexia is inapt and does not show what you think it shows. I stuck with the “weight” aspect of your analogy to show it is inapt.
I find that a great deterrent from gaining weight is that if I became fat, I would no longer be able to make fun of and criticize fat people.
Shoosh–
I try not to do that. There are all sorts of reasons people gain weight and it’s not fair to make fun or criticize for that. I’m a little vain so I’d rather not be heavy, but even at that, sometimes, I let myself get a little heavy.
bugs (Comment#65207) replied, “Enso is not a forcing, it is a cycle.”
Apparently you didn’t read the post. I never said it was a forcing. In fact, I said it was a process. I explained the process, provided links to posts that provide lots of detail. I illustrated the impacts of the process.
bugs:
Whether it is a “cycle” or not (you meant oscillation, cycle means something completely different) is irrelevant to whether it can act as a forcing.
In fact it can be a forcing too, in the same sense as CO2 increase is a forcing, if it modulates albedo. Even shifting cloud patterns north or south, as it does, will do this, so yeah, it acts like a forcing too.
Shoosh: “I find that a great deterrent from gaining weight is that if I became fat, I would no longer be able to make fun of …
fat people”
Sure you would. In fact you would need to be fat to make fun of fat people just like you would need to be handicapped to make fun of handicapped people.
If you don’t want to be considered rude and prejudized, that is.
Forcing is a word devized by the AGW scientists and has no basis in science of any kind.It was created to give the impression of man forcing the planet into a situation it should not be in.
No, AGW forcing is when they try to force you into living their way… tofu… no bathing… etc
I’d like to add my 2 cents and point out that the claim seems to be that C02 is a “forcing”… except for when it isn’t. Like, when the squiggly line goes down instead of up. If C02 was always a forcing, the line wouldn’t have any downward direction, ever.
Andrew
According to whose theory? Not mine.
Ok lucia, you are a Believer…when is C02 a forcing and when isn’t it?
Andrew
Re: John M (Jan 9 15:41),
I see your point. In trace metal work, ‘acidify the solution’ means adding sufficient nitric acid (usually) to reduce the pH to < 2. But I still disagree that the term ‘ocean acidification’ when referring to the effect of an increase in atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 is either incorrect or ‘scare-mongering’. It’s a compact phrase that avoids the circumlocution involved in many other constructions while still providing the maximum amount of information.
lucia,
Isn’t anorexic an absolute? One either is or isn’t. Not to mention that there are other health conditions that can cause extreme weight loss that aren’t anorexia nervosa.
Dewitt
This page discusses “degrees of anorexia”:
http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/genetic_anorexia.htm
writing
So does this one:
http://www.disordered-eating.co.uk/eating-disorders-treatments/anorexia-nervosa-treatment.html
I think people also discuss degrees of alcoholism, addiction, depression etc.
AndrewKY– CO2 is almost always a forcing. Of hand, I can think of one circumstance where it might not be. That could be if some other constituent in the atmosphere had radiative properties that made the opacity of CO2 irrelevant. That is: If some other constituent was opaque to outgoing radiation in the spectral region where CO2 is opaque and that constituent was sufficiently abundant to make CO2’s opacity not matter. I don’t think this is relevant to the earth’s atmosphere.
But I’m puzzled– why ask this? And why didn’t you answer my question before asking it? The question was “According to whose theory? Not mine.”
Re: Bob Tisdale (Comment#65206)
Bob, impressive as always. Thanks.
I am not sure I understand some of the distinctions being made. Does the general AGW model necessarily predict a steady rise, or could the predicted new heat just augment the step increases in average temp accompanying ENSO and other cycles? Can such signals really be separated?
lucia,
Sorry.
I thought we all understood that C02 is supposed to make the temperature warmer. So when the temperature goes down, how is the C02 involved?
Anderw
George
Or, to supplement the possibilities– just prevent the earth from losing as much heat as it otherwise would during the “heat loss” portion of the ENSO process.
The discussion is very interesting, and the migration of the heat intriguing. It seems it could be useful for midrange forecasts. Spotting a fuller migration and more key predictive parameters would help us know the current position in the ENSO oscillation,and possibly know it’s strength relative to others.
But I’d be more comfortable with any discussions of longer term trends if the discussion involved 100s of cycles rather than (if I understand correctly) 2. There are two “jumps”.
“I think people also discuss degrees of alcoholism, addiction, depression etc.”
Yet why is it that there are _varying degrees_ of temperature on this planet; some that can be 100 degrees or more apart every day yet people tend to discuss an “average” degree of temperature representing the whole planet when there is no such thing?
Just like there’s no “average” anorexia patient. No “average alcoholic” or no “average addict”; no “average” slim person, or average overweight person. Is there?
🙂 😉
AndrewKY–
Temperature goes up and down without CO2. Forcing due to CO2 would be thought as adding an upward tendency or trend, but the forcing from CO2 is not sufficiently strong to cause temperature to become monotonically increasing.
But can we get back to may question. You claimed: “If C02 was always a forcing, the line wouldn’t have any downward direction, ever.” Do you know any one who believes AGW who makes this claim? I no absolutely no one believer in AGW who makes this claim.
stephen richards:
Absolutely false.
Forcing (External forcing and parametric forcing) have existed as terms for decades before the appearance of AGW theories. To my knowledge it originated with the study of forced nonlinear oscillator theory. It’s dangerous to make claims that “this term appeared here first”, so I’m leaving that to “the best of my knowledge”.
Lucia:
I would refer to CO2 (acting as a greenhouse gas) as a feedback in the system, not a forcing.
Adding additional CO2 to the atmosphere is certainly a form of forcing…I’d refer to that as parametric forcing.
lucia:
tamino and John Cook may be too. Neither of them is willing to admit that a multiyear period of cooling is actually cooling. (____Insert snarky comment about AGW dweebs, I’m fresh out____)
Carrick–
I don’t know about John Cook? Tamino doesn’t say that temperature don’t drop in La Nina years. He doesn’t say that owing to CO2, 2011 mustbe warmer than 2010. He certainly doesn’t claim Feb 2011 must be warmer than Jan 2011.
Does John Cook predict a monotonic increase in anomalies? On what time scale?
If AndrewKY wants to add a caveat to his claim clarifying that he meant that 10 year averages must increase or something lie that, then he should add the caveat. He’ll still need to show that some AGW advocates insists temperatures have to warm on that time scale and nothing can overcome CO2 on that time scale. But right now, he seems to be suggesting that if CO2 is a forcing, temperature must be monotonically increasing. Period.
No AGW advocate I know of claims that. I suspect none even say that 10 year averages must rise given current levels of forcing. Sufficient volcanic activity might prevent that if it occurred.
“But right now, he seems to be suggesting that if CO2 is a forcing, temperature must be monotonically increasing. Period. ”
I’m saying that if C02 is ALWAYS a forcing, then temperature must be monotonically increasing.
Obviously, it’s not ALWAYS a forcing.
Andrew
AndrewKY–
There is at least on other alternative to your conclusion. It’s that the statement “if C02 is ALWAYS a forcing, then temperature must be monotonically increasing” is an incorrect statement.
Lucia,
If the temperature goes down, then obviously C02 is not “forcing” it to be warmer at that time.
Andrew
Andrew_KY– To understand the fallacy you are using, please read equivocation. If you are going to pretend this sort of nonsense argument is reasonable, there is no point discussing this with you further.
Andrew_KY:
Nah that’s plain wrong.
See this
The formula is:
T(t) = T_nino * cos(2*pi*t/tau_nino) + dTdt_co2 * (t-1960)
where
t is time in calendar years
T_nino = 0.2 °C
tau_nino = 5 years
dTdt_co2 = 1.6°C/century = 0.016°C/year
If you have other sources of natural fluctuation, over a short enough period, the slowly varying increase in temperature from CO2 can get “buried” by climate “noise.”
Lucia,
OK what is the defintion of forcing we’re supposed be using?
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
You can refer to wikipedia.
lucia, John Cook is the person who runs inaptly named blog “Climate Skeptic.” They both seem to get skittish when you talk about sources of uncertainty in short-period climate measurements. Both would of course agree that volcanos can cause a “real” drop in temperature. But in Tamino’s case for certain you can see the sort of numerical gymnastics he’s willing to go engage in to not have to admit that the warmest year for most temperature reconstructions was 1998.
“In climate science, radiative forcing is *loosely defined*…”
That’s kind of odd. You’d think that scientists would want to be exact.
“A positive forcing (more incoming energy) tends to warm the system, while a negative forcing (more outgoing energy) tends to cool it.”
Well, there you have it. A climate “forcing” is a tendency.
Why don’t they just use the word “tendency”?
Andrew
Is that John Cook or Warren Meyer who runs Climate Skeptic?
Sorry I have the wrong blog. I meant SkepticalScience, “getting skeptical about global warming skeptics”.
mea culpa.
Yeah, he’s one of the more mild mannered members of the AGW PR team
Carrick,
Sure. I think people can see that I don’t think much of Tamino’s mania of creating records by correcting. I think that’s pointless. The fact is, with some metrics, the 1998 record remains unbroken. I anticipate those will be broken during the next El Nino, but who knows? Anyway, there may be an eruption.
Still, I’m sure Tamino would disagree with AndrewKY’s claim above. He doesn’t literally think that CO2 being a forcing means that temperatures anomalies will be monotonically increasing. Though, of course, you could ask him. 🙂
Tamino would hold a gun to your head and try to make you believe his way… there’s your forcing
Carrick (Comment#65251),
“I meant SkepticalScience, “getting skeptical about global warming skepticsâ€.
This site is a sop to Real Climate, without the obnoxious denizens, trolls and endless hostility. It is anything but ‘skeptical’.
.
The mainstream climate meme is the fare of the day,every day.
.
OK, fair enough, but couldn’t they PLEASE be more up-front about their POV? If you are going to name your site ‘Skeptical”.. anything, wouldn’t it be better if you really were at least a little skeptical… of something?
.
Hell, James Hansen could post any of his endless lunacy predictions, and it would not be out of place. IMHO, it is just a site that regurgitates RC pap…. without the insults. Of little interest.
Lucia:
Same opinion here about Tamino’s manipulations of data.
I think that depends in part on the strength of the PDO, and of course its phase. We could be in for 5 more years of cooling before we get another major upturn, but as you say, who knows? Certainly not the climate modelers. 😎
Carrick–
I think you will agree with me that predictions are not data. That applies to my predictions just as much as some modelers.
I think using the word “forcing” when you mean “tendency” is equivocation, FYI.
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
As far as I can tell, the wikipedia page does not say anyone uses forcing to mean tendency. The word tendency is used in the article, but you seem to have misread and concluded they use forcing to mean tendency. They don’t.
Lucia:
urmm… no, I wouldn’t agree. I’d call it “model data.” 😉
But I was referring to Tamino’s manipulations of the measured temperature data to “prove” that 2010 was the warmest year on record for all of the temperature series.
I understood you were discussing measured data when discussing Tamino. 🙂
When I commented on predictions not being data, I was commenting on this
Lucia, I agree prognostications aren’t data… (‘cept I bet a social scientist would disagree there too :-P).
SteveF:
Unfortunately I agree. Unfortunately, with a bit more work towards objective thinking, he’d have a very good site. As it is, as he makes it clear, he’s in it to “oppose” climate skeptics viewpoints. Makes it intellectually worthless.
Andrew_KY, as far as I can tell the main difference between force and forcing is that forcings aren’t necessarily in units of force.
Radiative forcing for example has units of W/m^2.
The term forcings gets used in other physical sciences fields besides climate change (notably in nonlinear oscillator and fluid mechanics).
It is true if you have a forcing like CO2 emissions, that will cause the mean temperature of the earth to “tend” to increase, but the forcing associated with the increase in CO2 emissions is given in dimensional units…forcings is a quantitative term, “tendency” on the other hand is merely descriptive.
Carrick– Forcings are also used in heat transfer and more broadly, applied math. I agree with you that forcings has pretty wide spread usage.
lucia, I thought of that example after I wrote that. It need not be relatable to a mechanical force.
Another term I sometimes use is “drive” and its various conjugations. E.g., a driven harmonic oscillator.
DeWitt Payne (Comment#65227)
January 10th, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Unfortunately, perfectly valid scientific terms often don’t survive unmolested as they transit into public policy debates via government officials and the media. And certainly, the context in which “acidification” is used to drive a political agenda goes beyond “providing the maximum amount of information”.
This is very painful to watch for someone like me who has spent a lot of time doing demonstrations for grade school kids. I would have been ashamed to do this in front of 5th graders, let alone the US Congress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFqu6DpQlO4
I can also remember a few years back when a local “professional” reporter latched onto the perfectly technically valid term “volatile” after seeing it on a Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for a chemical used by a local company. A spokesperson for the company tried to explain that definition 1 applied to the MSDS, but our local “professional” was fixated on definition 3.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/volatile
George Tobin says: “Does the general AGW model necessarily predict a steady rise, or could the predicted new heat just augment the step increases in average temp accompanying ENSO and other cycles?”
The assumption you’re making with your question is that climate models model ENSO. Some do not, like the GISS Model E. And those that do model ENSO, at least those used in AR4, do a poor job of it. There are a number of papers about the shortcomings of those models with respect to ENSO.
WUWT was paying attention:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/ocean-acidification-chicken-of-the-sea-little-strikes-again/#more-31112
Lucia,
“A positive forcing (more incoming energy) tends to warm the system”
It’s right here in the above quote. If a positive forcing didn’t tend to warm the system, you wouldn’t know it was positive, would you? You can’t have a forcing that doesn’t do anything perceptible.
That’s how you recognize it… by it’s tendency to warm.
Except for when it’s gets colder. Then it’s tendency is not apparent.
Andrew
Andrew_KY–
Wrong. Your reading comprehension seems to have failed you.
In the geologic record where C02 was thousands of ppm’s higher the temperature dropped for hundreds of thousands of years and more. Mega giant amounts of time. May The Force Be With You. 😉
PS also in the geologic record, mega amounts of time when the C02 concentrations dropped and the temperature stayed warm….