I'm very glad to see this:
More info at the UCAR website.
I've been arguing for this type of analogy for years. There are alot of people out there, especially high school age students but not just them, who haven't thought much about statistics and how they apply to weather and climate. They do have an intuitive understanding of statistics when it comes to their favorite sport. This is a way to reach them. The climate/weather distinction works especially well when they consider short term event in their sport where random effects are important, versus long term outcomes where overriding factors become obvious.
In other climate news, iron fertilization of the ocean may have some, limited potential to eliminate between 1 and 10 percent of current emission levels from the atmosphere. As with any other geoengineering approach, we should think carefully about it, but we should consider it. If some day we used other means to get our net emissions to near zero, this may be one of several techniques like biochar and biomass power-plus-sequestration that could start reducing atmospheric CO2 levels to acceptable levels within a century from now, instead of the several centuries that the oceans will need to absorb most of the CO2 naturally.
I had a sports-mad neighbour once who didn't believe in climate change. We used to have conversations over the fence and once I spoke to him about climatologists often using analogy to explain their work.
ReplyDeleteHis response was such that I had to tell him "no, you're thinking of proctology".
Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.
The wepbage portraits of some TV weathermen suggest they
ReplyDeleteMay have inherites sme major league steroid stockpiles<
ReplyDeleteIron fertilization is a wonderful way to convert CO2 into CH4 in the intermediate term (100 to 300 years).
ReplyDeleteThe dead algae fall to the bottom, where, under anaerobic conditions, they are decomposed to CH4. Under aerobic conditions the CH4 would be oxidized on it's way back to the surface. However, remember, there was so much algae, that the decay of the algae consumed all the O2 in the water column. Thus, there is no O2 to oxidized the CH4 as it rises through the water.
The concept would only work during periods of rapid permafrost formation or rapid sedimentation - and the sedimentation has to occur when and where the algae are being deposited.
This is a project that we would have to get 95% right on a very large scale, in order to make things better rather than worse.
The Pros at Hadley Centre are also using Twitter to give short shrift to some regular heel-snappers. Ends of tethers seem to have been reached.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/richardabetts
https://twitter.com/dougmcneall
E.g.:
"@BarryJWoods @flimsin @nmrqip it's like you expect to have expert advice on demand to ignore. Frustrating."
"@omnologos If you took one of my paintings, sliced it in half, and put that in your house, I would be annoyed!"
"@omnologos I don't mean to force anything - more an etiquette issue I guess. I can't force you to be polite. I'll just trust you less. "