Category Archives: Climate

Ecology Now!

Posted on August 10, 2014 by gymnosperm

This exhortation has a strange ring to it now, and it is likely that no one under the age of fifty ever heard it, but  the image above is a poster of an actual flag created by the activist organization … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Climate, Ecology, Ethics, History, Religion | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

What Climate Sensitivity Should We Expect?

Posted on June 6, 2014 by gymnosperm

The great failing of climate science has been the inability to constrain the range of climate sensitivity to human CO2. The possible range remains from slightly negative to +5 degrees for a “doubling”. The concept emerged when the atmosphere was … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, climate sensitivity, Dud PDO, Energy of Photons | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Homo erectus and the Climate Scientist.

Posted on May 15, 2014 by gymnosperm

Habilis probably had fire, but Homo erectus definitely had fire and he would have been around at the last glacial maximum to discuss with a climate scientist the dangers of burning a lot of campfires. He does not look impressed. … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Pressure Broadening

Posted on May 14, 2014 by gymnosperm

In a recent blog post Dr. Roy Spencer took the skeptical community to task for a list of arguments he considers to lack merit. One of these was the argument that the CO2 absorption bands are saturated. He stated that … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, climate sensitivity, Optical Material Properties, Photon, Pressure Broadening, Spectra | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

The Dud PDO Index of Climate Sensitivity

Posted on May 12, 2014 by gymnosperm

Climate sensitivity is the response of the climate system to a given increment of CO2. It is often expressed as the response to a “doubling” of this gas from a pre industrial level. Estimates of climate sensitivity are all over … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate Change, climate sensitivity, Dud PDO, Global Warming, PDO | Tagged | 1 Comment

California Drought Update 4-14

Posted on April 27, 2014 by gymnosperm

For some reason the validated CDC data for March in San Francisco have been excruciatingly slow, and judging from local data will be revised down slightly. This is peculiar because it was raining hard as March came to a close … Continue reading →

Posted in California Drought, Climate | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Everyone Loves Lists, Should We Worry or Not?

Posted on April 26, 2014 by gymnosperm

Take a big leap back in time. It is 1974, forty years ago. The planet has been cooling for thirty years. There is very real concern about this. The Pentagon is making Ice Age contingency plans. The scientific community is agnostic. … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Climate Change, Cold is the New Hot, Global Warming, Greenhouse Effect, Greenhouse Spectra, Large Igneous Provinces, Photon Food Fight, Spectra, the "Pause" | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Pacific Doughboy and the Core

Posted on April 22, 2014 by gymnosperm

Here at the Trunkmonkey Research Institute we’ve been possessed of late by the Doughboys. This representation is not really very good. It is a plate carree projection extruded as a box. Trouble is, when you bend it round like our … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Geoid, Geology, LLSVP, LLSVP's are Doughboys, Seismic Tomography | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Pause That Refreshes

Posted on April 11, 2014 by gymnosperm

We hear more and more about the Pause. This pause refers to a hiatus in lower atmospheric warming for a human generation since 1997. This “pause” by its very name implies that warming will resume sometime soon. Only zealots will claim … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Global Warming, Paleoclimate, the "Pause" | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Spectra, Goddess of Light

Posted on March 31, 2014 by gymnosperm

We worship in strange and disjointed ways. One seeking to better understand how Spectra’s blessings arrive and leave our planet is confronted with a bewildering array of graphics. This one shows incoming light in nanometers. This one shows outgoing in … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate, Greenhouse Spectra, Optical Material Properties, Photon, Spectra | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment