Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I see that there is some confusion over terminology in the climate field. In response, I’ve put together a list of common terms, along with what far too often they mean in climate science. So without further ado, here’s my climate dictionary.
TERM DEFINITION
an expected result of global warming — “We predicted warming and got a heavy snowfall instead”.
anthropogenic — see “human fingerprint”.
anthropogenic change — “It’s warmer than usual”.
anthropogenic climate change — “Weather we don’t like”.
autocorrelation — “Say what? We don’t have to deal with that”.
Bonferroni correction — see “autocorrelation”
carbon dioxide — “The secret knob that controls the climate”.
cause — “Greenhouse gases”
climate — “It’s warmer than usual”.
climate change — “What ‘global warming’ became after we repeatedly predicted warming and got heavy snowfalls instead”.
climate feedback — see “natural variability”.
confounding factors — “Things that we choose to ignore.”
coupled non-linear chaotic system — ” y = ax + b “
effect — “dangerous anthropogenic global warming”
ever — “qualifier of superlatives to indicate things that haven’t happened since the Earth was first formed in 1970”.
external forces — see “other factors”
human fingerprint — “We can’t explain what caused it, so it must be from people acting badly”.
hundred-year flood — “Any flood recurring more than one news cycle apart”.
Industrial Revolution — “The time of the climate Eden when the temperature was exactly right”.
IPCC Conference of the Parties — “A recurring party attended by only the wokest of the woke”.
it is well known — “I believe this”.
it’s a boundary value problem — “This depends on future boundaries we can’t predict but we’ll act like we can.”
multiproxy study — “We left out the proxies that don’t agree with our theory”.
natural climate fluctuation — “We don’t know why it goes up and down”.
natural variability — “We have no idea what the cause was”.
naturally occurring dynamics — “Something happened that we can’t explain”.
other factors — “Deus ex machina”.
phase reversal — “Cause and effect just went 180° out of phase for no reason”.
predicted sea level rise — “Run for the hills! We’ll all be drowned!”
projections — “It’s a forecast but we don’t stand behind it”.
proxies show — “One tree in Yamal had this to say”.
regime change — “Cause and effect just went 180° out of phase for no reason”.
renewable energy — “This solution requires extensive subsidies”.
requires further study — “Give us more taxpayer money”.
social cost of carbon — “Our analyses will completely ignore the benefits of fossil fuels and the greening of the planet”.
the effect of various lag times — “Things that don’t line up can be made to line up”.
weather — “It’s colder than usual”.
well within expectations – “It’s colder than usual”.
Finally, we have the IPCC Likelihood Scale:
Virtually certain – “All my cool scientist friends agree”.
Very likely – “We really hope this is true”.
Likely – “Two climate models out of three agree”.
About as likely as not – “Nobody has a clue”.
Unlikely – “This outcome offends us”.
Very unlikely – “We really don’t want you going down that path”.
Exceptionally unlikely – “Stephen McIntyre said it first so it can’t possibly be true.”
Best to all,
w.
There’s another word I see a lot and love – robust.
IPCC — insidious panel creating corruption
pay-walled — you paid to have it written now you must pay again to read it
data — numbers that are adjusted often
One of these words doesn’t belong: climate, scientist.
climate scientist — One who studies the political winds of grant applications
high degree of confidence — I’m always right so don’t question me
point of no return — Everyone at the party got too drunk from the koolaid to get home
Tipping Point – The moment when all the non-“climate scientists” realise it has all been a colossal scam and refuse to pay any more for “climate research”, hence the “climate scientist’s” refrain: “We must avoid the tipping point at all costs!”
Climate action — what Science says we have to do.
https://youtu.be/pBxD7T1yU-w
David,
Thanks – Your video strikes very close to the truth. We have had repeated ‘protests’ in Seattle and Tacoma ports, whenever oil drilling support ships are in harbor. These protests invariably are led by oh-so-environmentally-concerned activists, wearing oil-derived synthetic clothing, paddling oil-derived plastic kayaks with oil-derived plastic paddles, shouting through electronically amplified ‘bull horns’, and transported to and from the protests by cars and aircraft that use oil-derived fuels.
The greedy ‘blood sucking’ parasite of your video is the perfect parody of our oil-sucking environmental hypocrite protestors…. just perfect!
%97 — climate scientists who agree with Bill Nye.
Never trust a man who indulges in such affectations as wearing a bow-tie. I guarantee that man will be a fake and a fraud.
Climate science would become great fun if we could just get two words added…non-performance clawback.
debate – “Something we always lose, therefore refuse to engage in, and have declared is over”.
overwhelming evidence – “Something our carbon-based, computer-driven models produce, once we feed it with our special data”.
When I glanced at the title,
my first thought was:
I hope this article will be comedy,
just like modern climate “science”
… and I was not
disappointed.
Well, I actually was somewhat
disappointed that Eschenbach,
who has written one bazillion
good serious articles here,
can write funny articles too …
… but then I realized he didn’t
have to write many jokes —
— he just defined the words
as the leftists do,
which we skeptics
see as comedy !
When you combine government
bureaucrats, politicians and
computer games, what you get
is non-science, better known as
nonsense !
I would like to offer another definition:
.
CO2 = the “miracle molecule”
that can cause anything
that frightens the chronically fearful.
That phrase was stolen from a comment
about another article, made by someone
else, who deserves credit, but I will
not remember his name,
until 20 seconds
after I post this comment.
My climate blog
Over 15,000 page views so far:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
“CO2 = the “miracle molecule”
that can cause anything
that frightens the chronically fearful.”
I haven’t been online since the last post,
but realized I stole (borrowed)
most of the CO2 definition above
from a comment by ALLAN MACRAE,
about another article — ALLAN is the
ALL CAPS moniker guy whose comments
are among the best at this website.
Writing that good just had to be
stolen and repeated, IMHO.
Kinda alluded to in the discussion but ain’t the biggest (unfunny) joke of this climate thing= Thermometer?
Define: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/thermo-
What to notice= NOT temperature
….which is exactly what they’re being used for right now.
A thermometer should measure and/or record energy
The joke is on *everyone* because where is the conversion factor for temp>climate, it’s just assumed everyone knows it.
A real/actual climate measuring station, in my book, should not be a silly little white box with a thermometer inside and a wind speed gauge.
It should be a contraption that records every Joule (as best it can) of energy inside a cube of (say) 1,000 metres on a side – the lower face of said cube being maybe 10metres below ground level.
And they can/should be everywhere – yes – inside cities and airports
And no to BoM Australia, one reading per second is ‘appeasement’ at its worst, one record every half hour will be fine.
As it ‘appens, very large numbers of such things already do exist.
Already ‘in position’ in all the places where ‘climate’ is important.
And they are incredibly sensitive.
You’re sitting inside one right now.
Only problem being the man/machine interface – how to extract the trend lines?
Last little point, subject= self-awareness.
Mostly as Baby Boomers, the folks we are taking the P out of here are, mostly, our own children
carbon dioxide — “The secret knob that controls the climate”.
************************************************************************************
LOL in todays socio-political times could even phrase that (not to “mansplain” this here….) as male genitalia — “The secret knob that controls the climate”.
Geologic history — “Something that never happened”
How about
“As the climate warms” – “In the name of Gaia, the merciful and compassionate.”
“Impacted by climate change” – “Happened on a planet with an atmosphere and an ocean.”
“Equilibrium climate sensitivity” – “When the cows come home” (climate never has and never will attain equilibrium.)
Global warming fears could be the result of a spelling mistake because clearly there is no “F” in global warming. The reality is that those in power think we think we should believe all this nonsense of climate change and give up our money to them for no reason. at all.
My suggestion:
Adjustment: The only way we can turn data into scary numbers.
Then “climate feedback” becomes: See Adjustment.
human fingerprint — “We can’t explain what caused it, so it must be from people acting badly”.
In recent years, scientists have successfully identified the human fingerprint on hot years, heatwaves, and a range of other temperature extremes around the world. But as everyone knows, climate change affects more than just temperature.
The “signal” of human-induced climate change is not always clear in other weather events, such as cold snaps or episodes of extreme rainfall.
Three new studies, released today as part of a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, take a closer look at two such events, both of which happened in southern Australia in mid-2016: the frosts that hit Western Australia’s South West, and the extremely wet weather that hit much of southeastern Australia during that year’s winter and early spring.
https://theconversation.com/not-just-heat-even-our-spring-frosts-can-bear-the-fingerprint-of-climate-change-89029
Can you imagine a court case where they used knife wounds as evidence of poisoning.
Sorry, your link is very far from conclusive, and relies too much on the assumption that AGW is real for starters. The studies referred to may “suggest” there’s evidence of a “human fingerprint” but that’s all they do at most. It certainly should be possible to demonstrate changes in climate on a local basis that reveal a “human fingerprint” where soil use or tree cover has been considerably modified, but what is being discussed in the link are observable but only speculatively explained variations (which may or may not be natural) predicated on the claimed but unproven existence of AGW.
Believers believe in their Gods, however absurd, however unlikely, and those who believe should surely be aware of the human tendency to believe and should look very carefully at what they believe and why, in every realm of their lives – as most genuine sceptics hopefully already do. Feynman said that the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Someone once wrote on here that humans are “belief machines”. Claims worth taking very seriously in my view.
“Sorry, your link is very far from conclusive,”
You’re too generous. Read my final paragraph.
climate model — “My published, but biased, opinion without me having to justify reasons for it”.
overwhelming evidence – “A phrase that is always followed by no evidence”
Tipping Point:- place where crap theories are dumped; place on the space-time continuum that recedes ever so slightly faster than events can approach it; innocent sounding but deadly time and place where scary, legendary and irreversible things happen to naughty people; a mythical animal with very sharp teeth, vengeful tendencies, that can only be summoned by second rate academics, and apparently is very similar in appearance to grandma walking backwards in a kinda weird cloak.
____ than previously thought – we are doubling down on doom porn
As in “Scientists increasingly believe that devastating winter storms like Bomb Cyclone Beelzebub are more directly linked to tailpipe emissions and cow flatulence than previously thought.”
Adjustments: Fabrication of Data
“Ever” — qualifier of superlatives to indicate things that haven’t happened since the Earth was first formed in 1970.
Now that one is good …
w.
“Polar Vortex” — cold air traveling south for the winter because it’s gotten too hot at the north pole.