[CF-metadata] standard name proposal for CCMVal

[Jonathan Gregory]

Dear Martin

There have been many questions like this in the past, and there's not a right
answer to be discovered - it's just a judgement. I agreed with you about
"burden" before anyway, as you know; I took it up again because we had not
had that discussion on this email list and because "burden" was questioned
again. On the one side is the usage in the specialist field, and on the other
is what is most readily understood by non-specialists, which is important too
because CF metadata is used across disciplines. CF stdnames are somewhere
between terminology and definitions, I think. Terminology is convenient, while
definitions are self-describing.

Anyway, if the majority is for "burden" that's fine with me.

Cheers

Jonathan

> As I mentioned earlier, the English language usage in the IPCC assessment 
> reports uses burden, not moles of X in the atmosphere. If I was writing a 
> scientific paper I would use their terminology. It is not a new concept, so 
> the priority, for the sake of clarity, would be to use something with an 
> unambiguous link to existing literature. 
> 
> It does, of course, depend on who you are communicating with, but I have 
> difficulty imaginging a situation in which I want to explain the contents of 
> a netcdf file to a random member of the population. If I was addressing the 
> scientific community, it seems clear that sticking to existing usage would be 
> better,