Just a quick link to a good post - Science After Sunclipse: What Science Blogs Can’t Do.

First off, I’m not an economist. I took one undergraduate-level macroeconomics course. And I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night. Therefore, I judge myself to be fully qualified to be admitted as an expert witness in economics. Luckily, the topic of today’s post is simple, and if I misuse any real economics buzz words, I ask that you politely point them out instead of chopping off my head.

When assessing the total cost of an automobile, there are two main areas categories: the initial investment and recurring costs. Figuring out the initial investment is easy; it’s the price on the window. The recurring costs are more difficult, and depend on how much a person drives.
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There has been much discussion lately about the recent “cooling trend” in the blogosphere. RealClimate has offered up a bet that there won’t be any long-term cooling. Roger Pielke Sr. offered his commentary. James Annan covered it not once, but twice. And William Connolley had a go at it as well.

This week offers a different cooling article in the Journal of Geophysical Research by Monaghan, et al. They looked at the Recent variability and trends of Antarctic near-surface temperature. Anthony Watts has posted on it, mostly quoting from a press release. Interestingly, the image he shows is from a NASA satellite study (which looks wrong) while the paper in question uses surface stations.
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Temperature is not the best metric to assess global warming. There are several reasons to use temperature when discussing global warming. The first is that most lay people can understand what a temperature is. Energy is a more difficult concept to grasp, even though they are essentially the same thing. To get the change in energy from a change in temperature, assuming nothing else changes, one need only multiply by a constant.

But as Dr. Pielke points out on his blog What Does Moist Enthalpy Tell Us?, there can actually be a decrease in surface temperature but an increase in surface energy if the water vapor content increases. He uses the example of Yuma, Arizona.
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