Glossary of Global Warming and Climate Terms (updated)

A light-hearted but satirical translation of terms and phrases in scientific papers, internet articles and news reports. Don't take it too seriously but remember that satire is best when a thread of truth (however thin) runs through it. The list is not in alphabetical order because it follows a tenuous narrative - at least, that's my excuse. It's not complete - I just jotted things down as they occurred to me. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free, you know what to do. I had a lot of fun compiling the list; I hope you have some reading it.

Term or phrase	Translation
See Bloggs et al. 2003	One day we might read it too
Bloggs et al. 2009	We hoped you wouldn't mention that
Global	Bits of the Northern Hemisphere studied
Regional	The area covered by our map
Ocean acidity	Ocean alkalinity
Increasing acidity	Reducing alkalinity
Low pH sea-water	Sea-water with hydrochloric acid added
High pH sea-water	Sea-water with no hydrochloric acid added
High morbidity	Little buggers don't like hydrochloric acid
W/m²	Watts per square metre
Watt	One joule per second
Watts	That damn blogger
Proxy	Tree rings, ice cores or sediments
Tree rings	The "lonesome pine"
Yamal	A few "lonesome pines"
The Hockey Stick	Two graphs for the price of one
"Nature trick"	A surreptitious grafting operation
Statistical technique	Smooth the hell out of it
Uniform priors	Dunno, just smooth the hell out of it
Mediaeval Warm Period	We got rid of that (see Statistical technique)
Little Ice Age	An urban myth (see Statistical technique)
Roman Warm Period	Man, that was, like, ages ago
Sediment density plot	You mean it's that way up?
Ice cores	Compressed ice layers with minute amounts of trapped air
CO2 in ice cores	0.03% of the minute amounts of trapped air
Ice core proxy	A scientific myth
97% of scientists	97% of 77 scientists
Almost all scientists	The ones we know who agree with us
All scientists	The Hockey Team
IPCC	An exclusive club for retired railway engineers
IPCC review stage	Fixing spelling mistakes & checking for 2035
IPCC report	Vast report written by 97% of scientists and WWF
WWF	World Wildlife Fund or World Wide Fund for Nature, depending on the size of the collecting tin
WWF reports	Magazine articles and telephone interviews
Greenpeace	Misguided geeks with a multi-million budget
Rainbow Warrior	Entombed in ice at 85°N
Environmentalist	The clue's in the mentalist bit
Row-to-the-Pole	Dragging a heavy boat over the ice to nowhere near the Pole
Consensus	The bane of true science and research
Peer review	Pal review or a favour repaid
Science reporter	Reject from the sports desk
Environmental reporter	Reject from the fashion desk
Climate-change reporter	Teaboy who was gettin' just too smart
Natural variability	Our models don't work
Uncertainty	We don't know why our models don't work
Almost certain	There's a definite possibility
Very likely	We believe it anyway
Could	Probably won't
May	Almost certainly won't
Possible	Unlikely
Might	Definitely won't
Slightly lower trend	No trend
Flattened off	Declined
Downward spiral	Slow decline
Obvious trend	Well I can see it
Rapid increase	Slight upward trend
Continued warming	Cooling
Rapid warming	Some warming
Projection	Best guess (see "Climate model" below)
Best estimate	Guess
Best guess	We don't know
Guess	We're sure we don't know
We don't know	Oh God our help in ages past
Good understanding	As far as we know
Low understanding	Zero understanding
Poor understanding	We'll shake the dice
Indeterminate	Even we couldn't fudge it
Correlation	The plots are almost the same shape
Good correlation	If you tilt your head to the right and squint
Zero correlation	The "hockey stick" (q.v.) graph
More research needed	Keep the funding coming in
Detailed research	The new guy is very good
Unprecedented	Take our word for it
Caveat	Must mention global warming
Rebutted	Didn't mention global warming
Temperature dataset	Readings from airport runways and A/C vents
Urban heat island	The temperature of asphalt and concrete
Summer	Global warming
Winter	Natural variability
Precipitation	Rain, snow, and what flies off fans
Snow	See it while you can
Rain	A good thing
Flood	Too much of a good thing
Tornadoes	Never seen 'em before this year
Weather	What we're getting today
Extreme weather	What we often got before
Climate	Last week in Austin, Texas
Living memory	The last ten years
Since records began	Since we first had the internet
Mean sea-level	The sea's always pretty mean
Sea-level rise	The tide's coming in
Extreme sea-level rise	The tide's coming in real fast
Future sea-level rise	Gotta up the ante
Extreme sea-level rise	We ain't gonna need street-cleaners
Climate model	A form of computerised astrology
Regional climate model	A less accurate form of climate model
Multiple models	One of them might be right
Multiple model runs	We picked the results we wanted
Model averages	A total nonsense
Model verification	We'll get around to it someday
Solar radiation	What the hell's the sun got to do with it?
Sunspots	Damn - I've gone blind in one eye
Sunspot cycle	The latest model with GPS and everything
No - the Sunspot cycle	Oh - wiggles up an' down, doesn't do much
ENSO	We don't do ocean cycles
Carbon cycle	The "missing sink" is there somewhere
Arctic warming	It might be a bit less cold there
Antarctic warming	A bit less cold at the tip of the peninsula
Ice shelf collapse	Mind you, we never looked before....
Glacier	A mega-version of what's in your gin-an'-tonic
Melting glaciers	The very few studied; i.e. all of them
Ice sheet	I'm sure it was here last week
Arctic melt	A kind of baked Alaska but with cheese
Tipping point	Be afraid......
Species extinction	Be very afraid.......
Polar bears threatened	Who'd threaten a polar bear?
Eskimos	Dumb clucks who think they know everything
Inuit	Eskimos who know everything about polar bears
Inuit elders	Eskimos smart enough to know just what they don't know
Clouds	If you know how they work, please email us
Cloud seeding	We swear talcum powder's the best
Ozone hole	A lower concentration of ozone
Greenhouse effect	Why we all haven't frozen to death
Greenhouse gases	All atmospheric gases except argon
Carbon dioxide (CO2)	A harmless trace gas essential to plant life
Carbon	Nasty black stuff
Carbon tax	A misnomer, a scam
Fracking	Getting something for virtually nothing except water and a few holes in the ground
Carbon sequestration	Like fracking in reverse, but getting no bangs for your buck. Eventually, free soda water from your tap
Alternative energy	An alternative to energy
Solar energy	Most available when you least need it
Wind energy	Least available when you most need it
Hydro energy	First find your river
Electric cars	Work best when they're plugged in
Hybrid vehicle	Like electric cars, but with backup
Water vapour	Aaaah, but that's a feedback
Climate sensitivity	A definite uncertainty
Climate forcing	Application of the definite uncertainty
Climate Change	Global Warming without warming and not global
Global Warming	When that "missing heat" reappears...
Climate science	The gravy train
Denier	Sceptic, a seeker after truth
Sceptic	What we should have been
Settled Science	An oxymoron, an unproven hypothesis