1. 1C
2. 2C
3. Academicene
4. Ad hominen
5. Adiabatic process
6. Advection
7. Aerosol forcing
8. AGW
9. Alarmist
10. Albedo
11. AR2
12. AR3
13. AR4
14. AR5
15. Argument from authority
16. Atmosphere
17. AW
18. Bayesian estimate
19. BBC
20. Biased Broadcasting Company
21. Birdmincer
22. Buddy review
23. CAGW
24. Car Crash Clinton
25. CDF
26. Climate
27. Climate change
28. Climate Extremist
29. Climate Scam
30. Climate Sensitivity
31. Climategate
32. Plant Food
33. CO2 desert
34. confidence (as in 95% confidence)
35. Dataset
36. DEFRA
37. Denier
38. Detection and attribution
39. Divergence
40. Dry adiabatic rate
41. Eco-fascist
42. ECS
43. EHC
44. El Niño
45. Emissivity
46. ENSO
47. EPA
48. Et al
49. Feedback
50. Forcing
51. Fossil fuel
52. Fracking
53. Fuel poverty
54. GCM
55. GHG
56. GISS
57. Global cooling
58. Global cooling scare
59. Global temperature
60. Global warming
61. Gore effect
62. The Goricle
63. Greenblob
64. Greenhouse effect
65. Greenhouse gas
66. Greening
67. Greenspin
68. Gullibles
69. GW
70. HADCRUT
71. Hadgem2
72. hind cast
73. Ice Core
74. Ice-age cycle
75. Infrared radiation
76. Insolation
77. Instrumental period,
78. Interglacial
79. IPCC
80. Kyoto
81. Latent heat
82. Longitude prize
83. Mann-made warming
84. Methodology
85. Milankovitch cycle
86. Model parameters
87. Models
88. NAO
89. Natural variation
90. Negative feedback
91. NOAA
92. North Atlantic Oscillation
93. Ocean acidification
94. Plant Food
95. The pause
96. PCA
97. PDF
98. PDO
99. Positive Feedback
100. Real science/ “science”
101. Regression
102. Renewable energy
103. Royal Society
104. RSS
105. SAT
106. Scaling factor
107. Sceptic
108. Scientific method
109. Sea level
110. Sensible heat transfer
111. Settled science
112. Skydragon
113. Sockpuppet
114. Solar activity
115. Souther Oscillation
116. Spatial resolution
117. SRLR
118. SST
119. Stratophere
120. Straw man argument
121. Sunspots
122. Surface temperature
123. TCR
124. Trade winds
125. Transpiration
126. Troposphere
127. UAH
128. UKMO
129. Uncertainty
130. Unprecedented
131. Upjusting
132. Upwelling
133. Urban Heating Island
134. UV
135. Warm-mongers
136. Warmist
137. Water Vapor
138. Weather
139. Wikipedia
140. WUWT

1C

Is a general approximation of the effect of CO2 without feedbacks for a doubling of the level in the atmosphere from the absolute bare minimum tolerable to plants to … something more tolerable to plants.

2C

Rising CO2 is rising and warmer temperatures are beneficial to the environment, so a small rise in temperature will be beneficial. Generally academics came to an arbitrary view that the benefits would outweigh any harm until at least a 2C rise. As a 2C rise now looks unlikely, sceptics don’t need to challenge this rise. Instead as predictions of temperature rise started coming in below 2C academics started trying to argue that the limit should be lower (without success).

Academicene

The academicene is the period since the PC transition

Ad hominen

Is an attack on the personality of the person rather than what they are saying.

Adiabatic process

A process that takes place without a transfer of heat between the system (such as an air parcel) and its surroundings. In an adiabatic process compression always results in warming, and expansion results in cooling.

Advection

The horizontal transfer of any atmospheric property by the wind.

Aerosol forcing

AGW

Anthropogenic or Man-made global warming

Alarmist

Alarmist refers to those who are believe in Global warming and are trying to spread alarm.

Albedo

The amount of solar radiation reflected from an object or surface, often expressed as a percentage.

AR2

IPCC second assessment Report (1995)

AR3

IPCC third assessment Report (2001)

AR4

IPCC fourth assessment Report (2007)

AR5

IPCC fifth assessment Report (2014)

Argument from authority

An argument from authority is an assertion that something is true because someone supposed to be an “authority” has said it. A classic argument from authority is to cite a reference which in effect says: this journal gives this view authority and therefore it must be right.

Atmosphere

The gaseous envelope surrounding the Earth.

AW

See AGW

Bayesian estimate

[stub]

BBC

See Biased Broadcasting Company

Biased Broadcasting Company

See BBC

Birdmincer

A whirling blade that kills birds.

Buddy review

Buddy review is the process by which climate academics ensure they all keep getting lots and lots of publications showing how necessary it is to keep pumping the public funds to them. Papers are judged on a number of criteria “agreement with the consensus”, “that they do not dispute the consensus”, “whether the academic agrees with the consensus” and “that they know how to smell consensus and can speak proper”.

CAGW

Catastrophic AGW or Catastrophic Man-made warming

Car Crash Clinton

CCC was a presidential hopeful in the 2016 US presidential elections. She came to prominence as the wronged wife of President Clinton after the Lewinsky affair (who like Pachauri chairman of IPCC and the EPA used interns for their sexual gratification).

CDF

Cumulative distribution function

Climate

Although both weather and climate are essentially the same atmospheric physical processes due to the strong influence of yearly changes weather tends to be used for periods much shorter and climate for those much longer. Generally climatic change is taken over periods of a decade.

Climate change

Is a change in the climate measured over any period greater than a year, but a period of 10 years is often used for convenience. Almost all climate change has been and will continue to be natural.

Climate Extremist

As the consensus view of likely impact of CO2 shifted ever downward with many predicting below the 2C level at which on balance the harm was expected to be greater than benefit of CO2 the phrase ‘alarmist’ became inappropriate.
Also with the increasing reports of low sunspot activity and generally colder weather in 2015, concern grew that the world could be heading for a period of cooling. In the past Alarmist had been used to refer to those exaggerating the effects of warming. However, as cooling became a real possibility, ‘alarmist’ might refer to unwarranted alarm about either warming or cooling. Therefore the term ‘Climate extremist’ started to be used to refer to those supporting the extreme predictions of warming. Predictions over 2C are usually considered extreme.

Climate Scam

The climate scam is the way certain people stoke up scares about the climate in order to line their own pockets. This includes academics jumping on any weather event to suggest more public money needs to be spent on their research. Wind developers promoting the scare to increase public subsidy. Politicians promoting the scare in a cynical attempt to get elected. And various public servants trying to increase the size of their departments by fabricating demand for their services by promoting the scare.

Climate Sensitivity

See ecs

Climategate

The unauthorised release of highly damaging emails from the University of East Anglia after they were illegally without following an FOI request.

confidence (as in 95% confidence)

[stub]

CO2 plant food

In the same way nitrogen is often referred to as “food” for plants, when I tried to find a quick way to explain the key importance of CO2 to life on earth, I coined the phrase “CO2 is a plant food”. As far as I know, I was the first to use this phrase, although, being so simple I would not be surprised if someone had not already used it before me.

CO2 desert (also first and second CO2 deserts)

A CO2 desert refers to a period in the geology of the earth when CO2 levels fall below 1000ppm. Technically we are in now in a CO2 desert. It is believed that if CO2 fell to levels below 150ppm that most life on earth would cease. Ice core data suggests CO2 levels in the ice-age fell to 180ppm (Hyper-arid?). It is widely believed that earth’s early atmosphere was predominantly CO2. Then when photosynthesising organisms evolved, the CO2 rich atmosphere started being turned into O2. Then in the carboniferous period the level fell below 1000ppm for the first time. For plants evolved to cope with around 0.6% oxygen, levels as low as the present 0.04% would have been extremely hostile. Equivalent to taking a plant evolved to live in Britain with 1000mm of rain into a desert with less than 250mm. This constitutes the “first CO2 desert”. At the end of the carboniferous period CO2 levels increased, but they have been falling over the last 150million years into what is described as the second CO2 desert”.

Dataset

Set of data [weak]

DEFRA

[stub] UK Department of Energy Fabrication and Rainforest Astrocities 🙂

Denier

Is a measurement of yarn thickness. 15 denier and less is fine, more than 15 is coarse. More than 100 is getting quite absurd.

Detection and attribution

[stub]

Divergence

The difference between two things usually expressed as a trend. For example the difference between the predictions of warming and the lack of warming in the satellite record.

Dry adiabatic rate

The rate of change of temperature in a rising or descending unsaturated air parcel.

Eco-fascist

An eco-fascist is someone who says they are an environmentalist, but in reality they are using the environment as a political tool to impose their views on other people in an undemocratic way and even in many cases to impose their view on nature itself. So, e.g. we have some eco-fascists who will describe ancient trees as ‘unnatural’ in order to remove them as others have removed tribes living in tiger reserves that appear to have been there thousands or even 10s of thousands of years.

ECS

The equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in global mean near-surface air temperature that would result from a sustained doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration
two
three
four

EHC

effective planetary heat capacity

El Niño

See ENSO

Emissivity

The fractional amount of radiation emitted by a given object or substance in comparison to the amount emitted by a perfect emitter.

ENSO

El Niño, in its original sense, is a warm water current that periodically flows along the coast of Ecuador and Peru, disrupting the local fishery. This oceanic event is associated with a fluctuation of the intertropical surface pressure pattern and circulation in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, called the Southern Oscillation. This coupled atmosphere-ocean phenomenon is collectively known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

EPA

US: Envirnment pollution Agency 🙂

Et al

Used in a citation to mean “and the rest of the authors”.

Feedback

Are changes that either increase or decrease the size of a forcing.

Forcing

Climate forcings are a major cause of climate change. A climate forcing is any influence on climate that originates from outside the climate system

Fossil fuel

A general term for organic materials formed from decayed plants and animals that have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas, or heavy oils by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth’s crust over hundreds of millions of years.

Fracking

Fracking is the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside.

Fuel poverty

[stub]

GCM

General Circulation Model
A global, three-dimensional computer model of the climate system which can be used to simulate long term changes to the climate.

GHG

See Greenhouse gas

GISS

GISS is a surface temperature measurement produced by NASA but it is not credible and is very likely biased as NASA have employed known environmental activists.

Global cooling

Global cooling is a belief that the world is cooling.

Global cooling scare

The scare was a scare during the 1970s when some academics believed the world was heading for a period of dramatic cooling.

Global temperature

Temperature can be averaged in many ways, so there is real measurement of “global temperature”. Instead various methods are used to estimate the average if the temperature over all equal areas of the surface were averaged together.

Global warming

Global warming refers to a belief that arose after a rise of global temperature at the end of the 20th century, that this temperature rise was mainly caused by man-made emissions of “greenhouse gases” particularly CO2 and that increasing use of fossil fuel would cause a continuation of that warming with likely catastrophic effects.
This belief was in part based on scientific evidence regarding the infra-red properties of gases, but the majority of the predicted warming was based on the belief that large “positive feedback effects” must have increased the effect of CO2 and the belief that the warming was not caused by normal natural variation. The area of feedbacks is still highly controversial, but even so, by the mid 2000s, many in the media were talking of a “scientific consensus” amongst academics that action was necessary. As a result many governments passed legislation with the intention of reducing fossil fuel use by either raising the price of fossil fuels or providing government subsidies to alternative energy sources which were believed to reduce fossil fuel use.

Gore effect

Is the coincidental juxtaposition of unusually cold weather with some event proclaiming global warming

The Goricle

A mixture of oracle and Gore (see gore effect

Greenblob

This word has been used to refer to the huge green sector of NGOS, academics, wind lobbyists carbon capitalists, jump-on-the-band-wagon celebs who all feed off the public purse and stir up public fear to gain their pound of public funding.

Greenhouse effect

The greenhouse effect is falsely named because it is not the same effect as a greenhouse. It arises because of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which cause the heat to be radiated from above the bulk of the atmosphere and because the increase in pressure from this height means the surface is warmer.

Greenhouse gas

A greenhouse gas is a gas which absorbs but also must therefore emit, infra red radiation. Increasing greenhouse gases usually result in higher surface temperatures because the atmosphere is cooler than the surface. But they have the opposite effect in parts of the atmosphere which is warmer. So, the idea they “trap” IR is false.

Greening

Increasing plants as in ‘increasing CO2 is greening the planet’

Greenspin

Refers to the various lobby groups which push global warming propaganda notably WWF, Greenpeace, so called “Friends of the Earth”.

Gullibles

Research shows those who support wind, solar and similar “PC” energy types tend to be more gullible than sceptics. As a result the public wastes huge amounts of money on energy sources of which many will never produce more energy than it took to manufacture and construct them. You have to be gullible to support them.

GW

Global warming

HADCRUT

Hadcrut is produced by the Hadley centre and the University of East Anglia (the focus of the Climategate scandal). This dataset may be subject to <a href=’#Upjusting’upjusting either due to the personal involved or because it combines data from many other organisations where upjustment could be taking place.

Hadgem2

Met Office climate prediction model

hind cast

To create a model and use it to “predict” the past.

Ice Core

Like an apple core but much longer.

Ice-age cycle

The ice age cycle is the warming and cooling of the globe over a period of 40 or 100 thousand years alternating between “ice age” and “interglacial”.

Infrared radiation

Electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between about 0.7 and 1000 µm.

Insolation

The incoming solar radiation that reaches the earth and the atmosphere.

Instrumental period,

The period for which direct measurements using instruments is available. For temperature this is around 1850 to present.

Interglacial

An interglacial is a period of relatively stable temperature after the dramatic warming which ends the ice age.

IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change
An organisation of governments with no scientific members which issues reports on climate.

Kyoto

The Kyoto commitment came to an end in 2012??

Latent heat

The heat that is either released or absorbed by a unit mass of a substance when it undergoes a change of state, such as during evaporation, condensation, or sublimation.

Longitude prize

The Longitude prize was set up by the Royal Society to encourage gentlemen academics to prove the superiority of the gentlemanly classes over the uncouth engineers of the industrial & social revolution that had chopped the king’s head off and severely clipped the feathers of the British aristocracy.
The prize was won by John Harrison whose clock enabled accurate navigation & mapping and literally gave us the modern world as we know it. But John Harrison was entirely the wrong kind of person and so the Royal Society did not give John Harrison the prize that he rightly deserved.

Mann-made warming

The phrase “Mann-made warming” has now come into common use and so needs defining so that long after everyone has forgotten Michael Mann the derivation is understood.
Michael Mann produced an iconic “hockey stick” graph which was plastered over the IPCC report. It combined tree-ring data and instrumentational data and “hid the decline” in tree ring temperatures. It also descaled and smoothed the tree ring data so as to remove known events such as the medieval warm period and little ice-age. In this way it fabricated an apparent unprecedented rise in temperatures in the modern period. This hockeystick is bogus as shown by the Central England Temperature record is our best proxy for global temperature since the 17th century. CET clearly shows periods of warming and cooling greater than the 20th century e.g. 1690 – 1730. Also, Mann used a methodology that selected “hockeystick” type data which Steve McIntyre showed would have created a hockeystick even when given red-noise data.
But Mann is notorious not only for his high-profile fabrication but because even when the “problems” with the methodology or intentional hiding of data were revealed, he refused to admit he was wrong and even sued Steyn. His failure to accept his mistakes prevented everyone, including himself, to move on.
So “Mann-made warming” has come to mean warming that is only there because of some ‘trick’.

Methodology

The use of a method or procedure as opposed to making it up as you go along.

Milankovitch cycle

The concept of the Milankovich cycles was developed in the 1930s by the Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovitch. They take account of three variations in the orbit of the earth around the sun. The earth’s orbit changes from being nearly circular to slightly elliptical (eccentricity).

Model parameters

The variables that can change on a model [weak]

Models

A climate model is usually expressed as a series of calculations that can be performed on a computer.

NAO

See North Atlantic Oscillation

Natural variation

Natural variation describes the normal climate change we see happening all the time. Some changes occur from one year to the next but other changes occur over several years or even months appearing as a period of trend.

Negative feedback

Feedback that tends to decrease the effect. So e.g. if rising hot air forms clouds, this tends to block out the sun and reduce the heating. But see positive feedback

NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere.

North Atlantic Oscillation

[stub]

Ocean acidification

A propaganda term used to refer to a very small reduction in alkalinity of the oceans due to a minuscule change in CO2.

The pause

For more see: ‘The Pause‘
Definition: the pause refers to the discrepancy between predicted and actual warming usually in referred to the IPCC 2001 report suggesting a minimum of 0.14C warming. Any trend of less than 0.14C warming per decade in those datasets predicted to warm is officially a ‘Pause’.
The Global warming pause was first identified by sceptics such as Mike Haseler (aka Scottish Sceptic) as early as 2005 but is first recorded in the climategate submissions of 2009. The pause was used to refer to the lack of predicted warming in the available temperature datasets. For example, by mid 2015, the satellite record showed no warming in 18 years and none of the available datasets showed even the lowest predicted warming of the IPCC report in 2001 (0.14/decade). The pause was hugely important because it showed that the temperature predictions were not coming true. This, together with the failure of predictions of increasing severe weather, flooding droughts and the refreezing of global sea ice leaving no overall trend in the period of available data, suggested that either the predictions were wrong, or that large amounts of long term variation were present in the real atmosphere and not included in the models, or both.
Whilst various attempts were made to explain the lack of predicted warming and assert the models were correct, there was no consensus as to why the predictions had failed. This led to widespread mistrust of these predictions. Despite continued high profile support from many academics as a result by 2015, many governments had started dismantling their climate legislation and reducing subsidies to alternative energy sources.

PCA

Principle Component Analysis

PDF

probability density functions

PDO

Pacific decadal oscillation

Positive Feedback

Feedback that tends to increase the effect. So e.g. if snow melts, this does not reflect as much sunlight back to space and absorbs more heat causing more heat than expected. But see negative feedback

Real science/ “science”

[stub]

Regression

[stub]

Renewable energy

A propaganda term for certain politically favoured forms of energy.
A form of energy that usually involves large scale permanent destruction of the environment huge public subsidy and which often falls apart before it recoups the energy cost in its manufacture and construction.

Royal Society

After the British revolution – largely caused by the early industrial revolution and the power it gave to industrialists & engineers and the restoration of the monarchy (with substantially reduced power), the Royal Society was set up boost the power of the aristocracy and king. It’s main aim is restore power and influence of the British aristocracy and elite and it does so by attacking and undermining UK industry and engineering using the proxy of CO2.

RSS

Remote sensing systems is a scientific research company located in Northern California, specializing in satellite microwave remote sensing of the Earth. It produces three tropospheric temperature datasets available from RSS, TLT (Temperature Lower Troposphere), TMT (Temperature Middle Troposphere), and TTT (Temperature Tropical Troposphere, after Fu and Johansen).

SAT

Surface air temperature taken over land

Scaling factor

A value which increases or decreases the result. [weak]

Sceptic

A sceptic (US: Skeptic) is someone who is sceptical or “takes no one’s word for it”. Instead, they like to see the evidence and make up their own minds. In other words, they are not only scientists in matter of science, but they also like to apply the rigour of science to many other areas of their lives. So, a sceptic should also be sceptical in politics, medicine, art, entertainment.
However, whilst a majority of academics supported the view that action was necessary due to the possibility of catastrophic warming, many professional people with engineering and science qualifications were sceptical. They argued that the evidence did not justify the predictions of catastrophic warming, that therefore it was likely the warming may well be small enough so that e.g. the benefits of CO2 fertilisation were greater than any harm and that the actions being taken to reduce fossil fuel use were disproportionate, were not cost effective or indeed in some cases were likely to increase fossil fuel use.
As a result of those who became known as sceptics (US: skeptics) an intense and often vitriolic debate started online. Sceptic academics were prevented from publishing, numerous attacks were made on sceptics such as false assertions of being “in the pay of BIG OIL” or being “conspiracy theorists”. However, eventually the lack of predicted warming gave the sceptics credibility.

Scientific method

The scientific method involves postulating hypothesis which predict measurable changes and then checking to see whether these occur. [weak]

Sea level

[stub]

Sensible heat transfer

Movement of heat from one place to another as a consequence of conduction or convection or both.

Settled science

An impossibility as real science is never settled

Skydragon

Often used to “Skydragon slayers” who disagree with the idea that greenhouse gases trap radiation for various reasons.

Sockpuppet

Someone who is acting for someone else or pretending to be someone they are not. As an example if a well known Climate extremist academic were to pretend to be an ordinary person editing Wikipedia and insist that paper they wrote were credible (when only written in order to win that argument), amongst all the the thinks that they would rightly be called, one is a sockpuppet

Solar activity

Whilst sunspots are the most visible change in the sun, there are changes to magnetic fields and particle ejection ad direct changes in insolation. These together with indirect effects such as changes in the level of cosmic rays are usually lumped together as “solar activity”.

Souther Oscillation

See ENSO

Spatial resolution

Models represent the earth as a series of points and effectively assume the area around the point is the same as the point. The spatial resolution is the distance between points.

SRLR

Signed root likelihood ratio

SST

Ocean temperatures taken just beneath the surface

Stratophere

[stub]

Straw man argument

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.
As an example take the climate extremist argument against sceptics: ‘sceptics deny global warming [true] that means they deny it has warmed [false] therefore they deny reality and are deniers [false].
In truth sceptics reject the climate extremist campaign which is known as ‘global warming’ but not the measurements showing warming and to say we reject warming is a bit like saying if you are opposed to a democrat president, you are opposed to democracy (Democracy is the root of the word Democrat).

Sunspots

Sunspots are dark areas of the sun which although massive, appear as small spots on the sufface. They are important because records of sunspots have been kept for 100s of years and there is evidence that the changes in the number of sunspots is linked to climate

Surface temperature

Temperature at or near the surface of the earth (as opposed to air temperature or ground temperature).

TCR

Transient climate response

Trade winds

The winds that occupy most of the tropics and blow from the subtropical highs to the equatorial low.

Transpiration

The release of water vapor to the atmosphere by plants.

Troposphere

[stub]

UAH

The UAH satellite temperature dataset, developed at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, attempts to infer the temperature of the atmosphere at various levels from satellite measurements of radiance.

UKMO

UK Met Office

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a measurement or estimate of the likelihood that a result will not be within a particular range or distribution.

Unprecedented

A word that used to mean that it was the first time it had occurred, but now much abused and used just to make a fairly normal event sound important. So e.g. 20th century warming in England is less than it was from 1690-1730, but to make the 20th century warming sound scarier it is often said to be “unprecedented”.

Upjusting

Upjusting is any adjustment of data which tends to bias the data in one way usually used to refer to the apparent increase in temperature data to show warming. In this instance upjusting derives either from cooling the past or by warming the present (or both). Accusations have been made of inappropriate “correction factors” that increase the trend, removing colder stations so that the average warms datasets from warmer stations or cherry picking the averaging method for those which show most warming.

Upwelling

The rising of water (usually cold) toward the surface from the deeper regions of a body of water.

Urban Heating Island

Due to lack of vegetation and heat absorbing surfaces in urban areas there is less evaporative cooling from plant leaves and more absorption of sunlight leading to higher temperatures.

UV

Ultraviolet Radiation

Warm-mongers

See alarmist

Warmist

I invented this word based on the word “metal detectorist”. From memory is started as “global warmist” but I eventually shorted it. It was intended to be a factually based non pejorative group description for those who believed in cataclysmic Global warming.

Water Vapor

Water vapour is the gaseous form of water found in the atmosphere. It is almost entirely transparent and colourless.

Weather

Although both climate and weather are essentially the same atmospheric physical processes they tend to be divided by the strong influence of yearly changes weather tends to be used for periods much shorter and climate for those much longer. Generally climatic change is taken over periods of a decade.

Wikipedia

A political propaganda site which acts to push climate extremism under the cover of being an online encyclopedia.

WUWT

WattsUpWithThat.com