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Post by icefisher on May 26, 2009 18:36:05 GMT
Roger Pielke:
"In 2005 James Hansen, Josh Willis, and Gavin Schmidt of NASA coauthored a significant article (in collaboration with twelve other scientists), on the “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications” (Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35). This paper affirmed the critical role of ocean heat as a robust metric for AGW. “Confirmation of the planetary energy imbalance,” they maintained, “can be obtained by measuring the heat content of the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy” (1432). "
OK so the main proponents of AGW established 4 years ago the definitive measure of planetary energy inbalance, the heat in the oceans. Little did they know when they wrote that the oceans were already 2 years into a cooling trend. . . .not to be revealed for a few years.
Much ado is being made about whether the ocean cooling trend is negative or flat. . . .but in the AGW scenario they fed us it should be neither.
I recall a debate a couple of years ago about how the oceans would be absorbing heat in a much larger heat sink than estimated by the AGW alarmists. The alarmists were then major big time downplaying the role of ocean currents to transport heat to greater depths in order to espouse faster and greater atmospheric temperatures, greater ice melt, and all the negative stuff that went with that. . . .going so far as to suggest those questioning the estimates of limited ocean heat storage were science deniers.
Today the situation is reversed and the alarmists are now pointing to the Mariannas Trench as the depository of the globes energy inbalance. (would you guys really buy a bridge from these folks?)
The Craig Loehe study suggests we have lost since 2003 almost half the heat in the ocean gained in the previous decade.
The sad reality for the AGW advocates is not only are they now resorting to divining rods to locate the lost heat.
This wouldn't be so bad if this was not coming right on the heels of a falsification of unabated heating and hockey stick denials of decadal ocean oscillations that when taken as a whole destroys about 50% of that "solid physics based AGW estimate" in the first place.
With those kinds of errors and the complete disappearence of any measurable manifestation of continued warming anywhere on the globe of a nature consistent with the AGW theory one has to wonder why anybody continues to support the case of the AGW alarmists beyond an abiding and continuing interest in finding out how these sorts of things really do work.
Yet the board is filled with folks doing just that continuing to espouse the AGW dogma. Yet each and everyone of them runs from the question of the missing heat.
Is even one of them willing to tackle this issue from a science perspective and reflect on the implications of massive longterm atmospheric effects from ocean oscillations?
I have been giving it some thought and it seems the empirical record might leave at best about a .07 temperature increase over the last 6 decades which is equal to about what anecdotal records have shown over 15 decades. Can anybody actually really point at the warming from CO2 that shows any acceleration over the longer term trend or is this issue as good as buried?
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Post by woodstove on May 26, 2009 19:01:50 GMT
With respect to Missing Heat...
It's got to be here somewhere. Just give me a minute.
One more minute.
OK, one more and then that's the last one.
Found it! Nope, wait, that was my socks. Here it is. Nope.
One more minute... ;D
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Post by socold on May 26, 2009 19:46:38 GMT
It's been answered several times by me, glc, etc. Ocean Heat Content is not as predictable as increasing a constant amount each year during a warm period. This is either because of measurement error or because of actual variation in the records. Or perhaps both. Lets wait and see if OHC stays flat for another decade before jumping to conclusions.
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Post by woodstove on May 26, 2009 21:03:01 GMT
Since we have plenty of time before jumping to conclusions, perhaps you would like, finally, to weigh in on the substantial cooling that has taken place since the Holocene Optimum.
Neither you, nor glc, nor Steve, nor Ken have been willing to touch this.
I'm afraid that until you explain the Holocene Optimum warming, the very idea that our current warming is unusual or worrisome will strike most around here as cherry-picking.
AGWers like paleoclimatology about as much as vampires like sunlight. ;D
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Post by kenfeldman on May 26, 2009 22:00:28 GMT
It turns out that it is in the oceans: About 10% of the Argo floats had an error, causing them to report temperatures from deeper (and cooler) parts of the ocean then they indicated. This lead to the "no heat gain" paper that has since been corrected. Note that the science was corrected two years ago and the deniers are still spinning the innaccurate story.
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Post by woodstove on May 26, 2009 22:10:40 GMT
It turns out that it is in the oceans: About 10% of the Argo floats had an error, causing them to report temperatures from deeper (and cooler) parts of the ocean then they indicated. This lead to the "no heat gain" paper that has since been corrected. Note that the science was corrected two years ago and the deniers are still spinning the innaccurate story. Citation please for article showing continued OHC increase.
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Post by kenfeldman on May 26, 2009 22:22:30 GMT
Since we have plenty of time before jumping to conclusions, perhaps you would like, finally, to weigh in on the substantial cooling that has taken place since the Holocene Optimum. Neither you, nor glc, nor Steve, nor Ken have been willing to touch this. I'm afraid that until you explain the Holocene Optimum warming, the very idea that our current warming is unusual or worrisome will strike most around here as cherry-picking. AGWers like paleoclimatology about as much as vampires like sunlight. ;D The warming of the Holocene Optimum (about 8,000 years ago) was due to the orbital forcings from Milankovich orbits and the feedbacks in the climate system that amplify them. The Holocene optimum occurred at the end of the last ice age, when changes in the amount of solar insolation in the northern hemisphere lead to the melting of the ice sheet covering North America. As the ice sheet melted, less sunlight was reflected and the planet warmed, which is also occurring now with the melt in the Arctic. Very small changes in forcings lead to very large changes in the climate. Very gradually, the orbital forcings changed from favoring warming in the Northern Hemisphere to cooling. The climate feedbacks also responed, resulting in a gradual cooling that would've lead to another ice age in 10,000 to 20,000 years from now. However, since 1850 we've pumped so many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that we've pretty much erased the cooling. There are many areas that are now as warm or warmer as they were during the Holocene Optimum, as seen by biological materials that have been thawed after the ice over them has melted. A partial list includes: - The Alpine Iceman (5,000 years old) - Western Canada tree stumps (7,000 years old) - Andean flowers (5,000 years old) - Several Antarctic ice shelves (10,000+ years old) - Many mammoths in Siberia (10,000+ years old) Several paleoclimate studies show that the temperatures now are about as warm as they were during the Holocene optimum, and the temperatures are projected to rise another 2 to 5 degreees. Climate scientists are very aware of the changes in past climate (see chapter 6 of the IPCC report, AR4, published in 2007 available ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch06.pdf), and study them to predict what may happen in the future. It's important to note that as late as 10 years ago, most people thought that climate change would be very gradual. It was by studying the paleoclimate measurements in the Greenland ice cores that they realized that very small forcings in the climate system could lead to abrupt climate changes of 10 degrees or more within a decade on Greenland. Rather than being comforted by the climate changes of the past, they are worried about what the forcings from greenhouse gases are doing to the climate. It may be that instead of taking millenia to melt, Greenland and West Antarctica could mostly melt within a few centuries, which would lead to annual sea level rises that would be devastating to coastal communities. There are already disturbing signs from the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica.
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Post by icefisher on May 26, 2009 23:06:04 GMT
It's been answered several times by me, glc, etc. Ocean Heat Content is not as predictable as increasing a constant amount each year during a warm period. This is either because of measurement error or because of actual variation in the records. Or perhaps both. Lets wait and see if OHC stays flat for another decade before jumping to conclusions. So what are you going to use to pick between the two theories Socold? A divining rod? And uh oh, waiting a decade or so is exactly and precisely what I had in mind.
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Post by kenfeldman on May 26, 2009 23:34:30 GMT
It turns out that it is in the oceans: About 10% of the Argo floats had an error, causing them to report temperatures from deeper (and cooler) parts of the ocean then they indicated. This lead to the "no heat gain" paper that has since been corrected. Note that the science was corrected two years ago and the deniers are still spinning the innaccurate story. Citation please for article showing continued OHC increase. Here's the abstract, with the citation as the last line: The full paper is available at this link: ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
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Post by icefisher on May 27, 2009 2:47:51 GMT
Pointing out studies that show no warming as opposed to others that show cooling doesn't get to the heart of the debate.
Neither is compatible with CO2 forced warming.
Forced warming is just that an excess of heat in over heat out. If thats the case it has to be somewhere and studies of flat or declining temperatures in the ocean does not show where it is.
Some of the well-trained seals of the AGW dogma machine will no doubt say its compatible, say it has occurred before but to a man they do not explain the physical process by which it does occur.
Without such an explanation we are scientifically at square one in this debate.
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Post by socold on May 27, 2009 8:39:50 GMT
Climate science expects to understand the causes of the long term trend, not the short term variation. What caused OHC to jump suddenly in 2003 in that record, what caused it to be comparatively flat in the periods before and after? Who knows. Could be measurement error (there's plenty of corrections and differences between records going on), could be an exchange of heat between the upper and lower ocean, something else, or any combination of the above.
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Post by glc on May 27, 2009 9:18:41 GMT
Re: OHC plot
Put prejudices to one side for a minute and take a look at the plot. No-one could possibly claim with any certainty that the oceans have now stopped warming. There was a decade-long flat period in the 1980s where a similar claim could have been made (with more justification), but warming still resumed.
I admit I don't know why the oceans appear to have taken a breather. Perhaps ENSO conditions over the past 6 or 7 years caused more heat to be released into the atmosphere than normal. Whatever - it's far too early to call the 'end of global warming'.
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Post by poitsplace on May 27, 2009 9:24:00 GMT
Climate science expects to understand the causes of the long term trend, not the short term variation. What caused OHC to jump suddenly in 2003 in that record, what caused it to be comparatively flat in the periods before and after? Who knows. Could be measurement error (there's plenty of corrections and differences between records going on), could be an exchange of heat between the upper and lower ocean, something else, or any combination of the above. So let me get this straight...you've no clue why it warmed from 1910-1940 by about the same as the warming period from 1980-2000(ish). You have no clue why the temperature fluctuates up and down over the short term. The feedbacks are "pulled out of a hat", (admitted) poorly understood and some may actually be so far off that they have the sign wrong even within that limited understanding. And finally to top it all off you're admitting that the initial state upon which the trends, feedback relationships and pretty much everything is based might be wrong wrong too... ...but you feel these models based on shoddy data, poorly understood relationships and a potential for nearly equal amounts of unexplained, natural climate variation are accurate??? AGW proponents trying to defend the validity of the models amidst the woefully inadequate understanding of climate ...sounds a lot like that Charles Durning number from Best Little Wh()rehouse in Texas www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mNDHTfdn1A (LOL, the filter replaces the actual word with 'sleeper')
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Post by steve on May 27, 2009 10:40:37 GMT
So let me get this straight...you've no clue why it warmed from 1910-1940 by about the same as the warming period from 1980-2000(ish). You haven't got that straight, so there is no answer to your point. Can you look at the Levitus plot, or the Domingues plot that includes uncertainties (you need to use your imagination to add on the flat spot since 2003), and state with confidence that the data shows that OHC is on the turn? irpwfoeow1t1bneot"ync"b.
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Post by poitsplace on May 27, 2009 11:01:39 GMT
So let me get this straight...you've no clue why it warmed from 1910-1940 by about the same as the warming period from 1980-2000(ish). You haven't got that straight, so there is no answer to your point. Can you look at the Levitus plot, or the Domingues plot that includes uncertainties (you need to use your imagination to add on the flat spot since 2003), and state with confidence that the data shows that OHC is on the turn? I was referring to the long list of uncertainties (including OHC) in climate models in general...although now that I think about it the connection to the thread subject is a bit on the weak side so consider the comment withdrawn.
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