[Glossary] Common abbreviations and uncommon words

As used on this blog, and sometimes elsewhere. This post will be a work in progress, probably. I said that I would occaisionally push the publication date closer to "now" to keep it near the top, but that doesn't work: wordpress changes the URL to include the month so old links break. Rats.

[[link]] - used sometimes when I'm directing you to a wikipedia page in emulation of mediawiki markup.

A2 - SRES scenario A2. A "high emission" scenario.

AR4 - IPCC Fouth Assessment Report (not falled the FAR because that was IPCC '90, the First Assessment Report, though of course it wasn't called that).

AW - Anthony Watts, comic book author; see WUWT.

Bob - Robert Grumbine - regular from the good old days of sci.environment, now blogs; remains an oceanographer, if I had to use a single word.

CAGW - phrase used by deniers as an abbreviation for "I'm a raving looney, please ignore everything I say".

CCC - Clear Climate Code - http://clearclimatecode.org/ - an open source temperature series and maybe more.

Emeritus - as in Lovelock goes Emeritus - see On being ripped off.

FS - Fred Singer - once the Dark Side, now just a faded old man.

EOF - Empirical orthogonal function. A data reduction / analysis technique that often confuses, and is probably over-used. See my in-line explanation.

GHG - [[Greenhouse gas]]

GW - [[Global Warming]]

JA - James Annan - little cited climate researcher whose blog (which you should read) hosts many pictures and occaisional penetrating posts on topics such as climate sensitivity.

Hank - as in Roberts. Regular commenter here and elsewhere, winner of the 10k comment prize and I still owe him a post.

KK - Keith Kloor - blogger who pissed me off a while back; keen on Curry.

M&M - McIntyre and McKitrick - much used in the old days (circa 2003 I'd guess) before it became clear who was the organgrinder and who was the monkey.

McK - McKitrick: the monkey.

McI - Stephen McIntyre, the Organgrinder.

mt - Michael Tobis - a sci.env'er from the old days, now sadly gone to Slytherin, very interested in climate communication, and far politer than me.

IPCC - Intergovenmental Panel on Climate Change. But you knew that!

RC - RealClimate

RP - Roger Pielke - either Jr or Sr

RSS - Remote Sensing Systems - Mears et al. - purveyors of fine quality satellite temperature records to the cognoscenti.

SC or S+C - Spencer and Christy. Purveyors of slightly lower quality satellite temperature records, in the early days darlings of the septics because their record showed cooling, since corrected with the help of RSS.

SEPP - nominally the Science and Environment Policy Project, but just FS's lets-pretend-I'm-more-than-just-one-man nowadays. Nowadays run by Ken Hapalla, an unknown.

Septic - see or Septics and skeptics; denialists and contrarians

SLR - Sea Level Rise.

SRES - IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios.

TAR - Third Assessment Report of the IPCC.

Tim Ball - who?

UAH - University of Alabama Huntsville, the location of John Christy and Roy Spencer, purveyors of slightly grubby satellite temperature records to the undiscerning. See-also S+C.

WE - Willis Eschenbach. A "skeptic", but by the standards of the tribe fairly sane. See, for example, his post on Liu+Curry

WGI - the IPCC is divided up into three "working groups" of which the first - WGI, the physical science - is the best (or so I assert) and most well known, and responsible for all the stuff you've seen quoted about likely temperature changes and whether people Did It.

WUWT - Watts Up With That, a daily comic.

More like this

erm, you need to use "the dark side" more consistently, please and thanks.

[Just my little joke. Do you think people will be mislead? I'll re-arrange it if so -W]

The link to RealClimate is broken.

[Thanks. Fixed: my ability to mis-spell climate remains top-notch -W]

Just my little joke. Do you think people will be mislead? I'll re-arrange it if so -W

I don't read here often/regularly enough to have understood this in-joke. So it's slightly confusing to me, especially when I follow the link and arrive at a place with has nothing to do with AGM per se. On the other hand, if you have a negative option of what is linked to, I can (up to a point) imagine what the in-joke might be about, since I myself (a mathematician working as a computer programmer) have a variable and not-necessary-good option of the linked-to scripting language.

If there's a link which drops a big clanging hint as to the actual in-joke, that might be the solution (suggested because I know explaining jokes tends to ruin them).

[OK, that is two people who didn't link the mt link text of "Dark Side" so I'm chaning it to "Python Side" which is not nearly so much fun :-) -W]

A broadly similar joke can be made: Slytherin.

[Perfect, thank you. You win an entry for CCC in the glosssary :-) -W]

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 04 Jul 2010 #permalink

I've meant to ask this before, but is it merely coincidence that "septic" also shares a meaning from (one form of) rhyming slang?

[Pure coincidence -W]

Thanks. I wondered especially as, working for a US owned company, it's one I use a lot ;), so always have to make a mental note whenever I read it here or elsewhere.