They write these headlines without so much as a nod to their own absurdity – “The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat” (link fixed)
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
Now, watch the struggle to make the facts fit the narrative;
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it’s probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can’t be directly measured at the moment, however.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they’ve been playing during this period,”
Trenberth says.It’s also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it’s possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don’t know about. It’s an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.
“I suspect that we’ll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis,” Trenberth says. “But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board.”
Kevin Trenberth has been mentioned here before – in this 2005 quote from a resigning Chris Landsea, citing IPPC misrepresentation of hurricane research;
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity.
Two years later, Trenberth was still using hurricane Katrina as evidence of global warming.
The sun is remaining quiet. NASA scientist boldly predicted it would kick into Cycle 24 this month; this month is almost over, and the sun is Spotless. Now NASA scientists are saying things will begin in May. Any bets the goalposts will keep shifting?
We’re in for some COLD years.
btw, anyone seen johnny cross? He off writing an already-reviewed-by-his-peers paper for the IPCC on wavelengths of CO2 somewhere?
cgh:
Nice summary, I will be quoting this.
Water vapour latency is short, and CO2 latency is long, so un-natural sources of CO2 have longer term effects. However, the large scale unknowns that lurk in the math of the models surrounding the role of water-vapour as a feedback mechanism invalidate the models as far as I am concerned. The sign is unknown, let alone the magnitude, of that feedback.
What is your source for the ocean/atmosphere exchange? I have yet to run that number down.
Notice the qualifiers that pop out as soon as person has to state opinions on AGW. It underlines how wishy-washy all of this is, for me.
“Global warming doesn’t mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming.”That statement from NASA scientist Josh Willis.
Gosh Josh, you must be joshing.
A period of “less rapid warming.” Are you afraid to say “a period of cooling.”
Great work Josh, and don’t forget to apply for more funding.
William,
There is a range of estimates, because this exchange is not thoroughly understood. One estimate is found here http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html
in about the sixth paragraph where they quote 90-100 petagrams. I have in the past seen estimates much higher, as much as 3600 pg.
With respect to the sign, that’s the most damning thing of all about the theory. It all depends upon a posited positive feedback effect of the increased CO2 for which no physical evidence exists, at least not that I have seen, nor does IPCC demonstrate it. But they have to have such a positive feedback, because the incremental impact of more CO2 is marginal at best because of the saturation of the absorption bands. Otherwise, there’s nothing to the theory.
What we do know is that the repository of any excess CO2 is the oceans. There may be some concern about increased ocean acidification, but neither the NOAA nor the Royal Society articles I looked at address the question of changes in CaCo3 formation rate and consequent removal of CO2 into limestone formation. We know that the vast bulk of our planet’s carbon dioxide inventory was transformed into limestone, but I have not run across any research which suggests how the rate of formation is altered by increased atmospheric CO2. It’s an important question for AGW. What we do know from the fossil record is that the same oceanic species such as coral reefs today that are claimed to be at risk from acidification thrived in much earlier geologic periods in which ocean acidity was much higher than at present.
Yes, nice summary cgh.
If it does continue to get colder, or not heat, over the next year or so, Otter, you realise that the warmerers will, with a straight face, say that global warming is happening but it is being masked by the Sun, all the time maintaining that the Sun’s effects are negligable.
What is warming to me is that these two are scientists at institutions working with Scripp’s and they are scratching their heads. I expect the tone of their responses were guarded as they aren’t so much puzzled by the data but are puzzled about how to talk themselves out of the global warming corner. After all, even they can read the data.
This is really simple. The probes were built by Diebold as a subcontractor for Halliburton. Of course they were programmed to show what the oil companies want you to see.
So says my Toyota “Pious” driving neighbor.
Treg
This from MSM is alarming found poetry.
…-
Global warming rushes timing of spring
[…]
“sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia.”
“Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying.”
“Blame global warming.”
This is a beaut! LOL.
“In much of Florida and southern Texas and Louisiana, the satellites show spring coming a tad later, and bizarrely, in a complicated way, global warming can explain that too, the scientists said.”
http://tinyurl.com/2kvhds (asspress)
Oh, MAz2, that link is evil. CTV’s science editor is a moron, a joke, a nincumpoop, un cornichon, a fool, a typist, a non-thinker.
This is the worst piece of “science editorship” that I have ever seen, and I told CTV so.
I hope the CTV science editor becomes an “ex-science editor”.
Personally, I think a five year old wrote that piece, after he had been indoctrinated by a showing of the Gorical’s movie at school.
More eco-fraud from Robert Bateman/MSM/envirofascists.
It’s on YouTube.
…-
“Bateman afterward rushed into the shower with the print to wash the paint off so as not to compromise the print, which is the reference copy in the studio.”
Headline: “Robert Bateman defaces painting — on purpose”
“In a video now seen on YouTube, Bateman takes black poster paint and, in bold strokes, covers one of his pieces called Orca Procession, valued at $1,950 (U.S.) to show what an oil spill will do to the west coast”
“Bateman was approached by an environmental group”
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/349121
Video here:
http://www.notankers.ca/
Tim Ball was interviewed on CTV news today. He took the opportunity to say he did not believe CO2 was causing changes. The main topic, of course, was the heavy snow in the COTU.
William Hughes at 4:52 PM said “Water vapour latency is short, and CO2 latency is long, so un-natural sources of CO2 have longer term effects.”
Please, THINK about that statement, will you?
“Tim Ball was interviewed on CTV news today.” — Wow surely this is the BIG NEWS on this topic — a “denier” actually being interviewed by MSM. Though if he spoke out of turn in suggesting that CO2 is not causing warming, well, he probably will not be invited back.
Don’t worry about the media letting details like no cooling in the ocean get in the way of a good story.
In today’s National post there was this article:
“What snow? This year could be one of the warmest on record
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Reuters
Published: Wednesday, March 19, 2008”
“Bucking the trend of global warming, the start of 2008 saw icy weather around the world from China to Greece. But despite its chilly start, 2008 is expected to end up among the top 10 warmest years since records began in the 1860s.”
You can also find this story if you Google the words Alister Doyle 2008 warmest.
So…even though there has been record snow and cold this winter
…we are just 2.5 months into the year
…everyone is still waiting for the next solar cycle to start
…we just KNOW that this will be one of the 10 warmest years in the last 150 years?
Riiiiiiight!
The irony is that half of the article focuses on how cold and how much snow has fallen in many places that don’t see harsh winters (like China).
This will be interesting to watch.
So the missing heat is not in the oceans and it is not in the atmosphere either. So where did it go? It can’t be that there never was any heat because those global warming computer models predicted it would be there and they are never wrong. So it has to be somewhere.
Did they check behind the cushions on the couch? In our house when things like the TV remotes go missing, that’s where we often find them. Maybe the missing heat got jammed down there. Just a suggestion.
JMD, I think it’s with the socks that go missing from the washing machine. We know they’re there, but we just can’t find them.